2012 Catalogue Archive

In a recent body of work, Jill Magid draws connections between Goethe’s 19^th century epic poem, Faust, and Fausto Cardenas’ strange and violent action on January 21, 2010. In Goethe’s poem, Faust’s search for knowledge and enlightenment touches on ideas of politics, nature, culture, religion, and philosophy. In the incident on January 21, 24-year old Fausto Cardenas walked to the steps of the Texas State Capitol and fired six shots in the air from a handgun, for reasons that are still unknown. Magid happened to be at the Capitol building that day and witnessed the event. In this drawing, Magid connects the tragic and mysterious life of both stories through the controlled, printed text from the poem and a violent splatter of ink that obscures it. Magid lives and works in New York. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at AMOA-Arthouse, Austin; Berkeley Art Museum: Matrix Program, Berkeley; the Whitney Museum, New York; and Tate Modern, London, among others.