Martha Rosler: Truth is/is not

Frontier, from the series House Beautiful: The Colonies, c. 1969-72

Photomontage

(GP3000)

Opening Thursday, April 10, 2025, 6:00pm - 8:00pm

Galerie Lelong, New York, is pleased to present our first solo exhibition with the artist Martha Rosler, Truth is/is not, opening on April 10, 2025. Since the 1960s, the Brooklyn-based artist's practice has been defined by a sharp and unfiltered perspective on contemporary social and political issues of the public sphere, often through addressing the unexamined acceptance of the systems that create and define them. Drawing from works across decades, the exhibition examines how political consciousness is molded through the dissemination of ideas and truisms by mass media, reinforced by constant repetition. The exhibition's title is borrowed from a recent essay by the artist published on The Brooklyn Rail's Critics Page, "truth is, or is not," in which Rosler unpacked the changing landscape of ideological approaches toward truth and its place in the contemporary art world.

Truth is/is not begins with an exercise in decision-making. Rosler positions an ordinary turnstile at the entrance and exit of the gallery, alongside a television and Xbox console with the game "Dance Central" which uses a sensor to detect the movements of players as they follow the moves on screen. Visitors must decide whether to pay a quarter to go through the turnstile and enter the exhibition or to play the game for a dollar. This choice juxtaposes instant gratification with an open-ended opportunity to explore complex representations of the consequences of institutional systems.

Upon entering the gallery's main space, visitors negotiate Reading Hannah Arendt (Politically) for an American in the 21st Century (2006). This forest of hanging panels displays passages in English and German from the writings of the German Jewish émigré philosopher on authoritarianism and subject populations. Glimpsed through the translucent panels, pertinent selections from Rosler's photomontage series and gallery visitors become a backdrop.
It Lingers..., 1993
Installation with color photographs, text, and photocopies
(GP3002)

The entirety of the series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home, New Series (2003, 2004, 2008) will be on view. Rosler's photomontages join journalistic images of war with high-gloss magazine advertisements, exploding the belief that the middle-class American home is safely insulated from wars abroad and instead implying that the two are inescapably intertwined. This series marks the restart in the face of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan of Rosler's earlier series House Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (c. 1967-72), of which selections are also on view. Further examples of the artist's photomontages from the series House Beautiful: The Colonies (c. 1969-72) and The Rewards of Money (c. 1987-88/2022) tie the promise of the domestic to an imperialist vision. The former presents the universe as a new frontier for colonization while the latter introduces the infiltration of destruction into the upper-middle-class home. Meanwhile, selections from the feminist series Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain (c. 1966-72) center the impact of high-gloss marketing on women, a perspective that has always been a cornerstone of the artist's practice. In their interrogation of the interconnectedness between domestic ideals and imperialism, Rosler's photomontages echo sentiments from Arendt's writings, including what the philosopher describes in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) as "the bourgeoisie's belief in the primacy of private interest."

The small gallery space is anchored by Rosler's It Lingers... (1993). This photographic tableau is composed of visual and narrative representations of war and politics—new and old, actual and fictive. Displayed on monitors in the room are reels of photographs taken by the artist during demonstrations held in New York City between 2012 and 2025, lending weight to individual and community driven efforts that contrast with the mass-media narratives interrogated throughout the exhibition.

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