Ian James
RIP Hard Rock Cafe, Myrtle Beach

Curated by Keith J. Varadi / Gene’s Dispensary

June 7 - July 20, 2024
Reception: Friday, June 7, 5:00 -8:00 p.m.

Side A: Pyramid as emporium, pyramid as headquarters, pyramid as home, pyramid as institution, pyramid as landmark, pyramid as sculpture, pyramid as temple. A triangle of sadness forms from fantasies spotted in the rear view. A circle becomes squared out here in the real world. Beware of improvisation in the wild. Intuition pays in spades, you quickly learn. Soon, it also becomes clear that you ought to leave your money at most doors on the road; the noble thing for us all to do is to invoice later for honesty.

Side B: This aging real estate agent asks how much anyone can know about you based on your credit score. Just then, a chicken takes a shit on an old scratcher. And a scrawny guy in a cowboy hat pulls up in a muscle car and says, “Get in! We’re going to the Dairy Queen.” Did I just win the lottery?

Side A: When you live on the edge of society, there’s a tendency to see things differently. Borders and boundaries aren’t always physical, you know. You hear one sort of siren on the streets and another by the beach. The day to day of everything can make you pretty salty – that’s why people have alcohol and religion. But what else connects people better than art and ideas? Despite what drunks and prophets say, there are no universal truths; there is merely a spectrum of cleverness and creativity. And without humility, love, and reciprocity, we collectively make a habit of drowning in regrets and futility.

Side B: This building is shining like a disco ball. Where am I? Wichita? My bubble guts are killing me, and I haven’t been able to get a seltzer in days. Pamphlets of vitamins and other supplements are strewn about the parking lot, or am I making that up? Is it corny to feel so fondly about this Norman Rockwell scene? I miss my family, but I also miss my old self. I used to be able to run freely like those stray dogs. I used to be able to listen to my own thoughts instead of deli men and produce ladies yelling sentiments I don’t fully understand, but if I’m being honest, sometimes I prefer to hear their cacophony.

Side A: You turn off your overheating laptop, head to the garage, and turn the keys in your used SUV; the New Radicals come on your car stereo. Remember their one hit? As that dude in his cute little bucket hat shuffled, shimmied, and slid on mall floor tiles, he belted out, “This world is gonna pull through. Don’t give up; you’ve got a reason to live. Can’t forget: We only get what we give.” Holy shit, you guys – he really was a new radical. That was quite the messaging at the time. Y2K and 9/11 were right around the corner, and that same year, Carson Daly was shuffling himself – between musings on nookies, cookies, genies, and scrubs.

Side B: Now it’s Beethoven’s 3rd, or is it the 14th? Would you rather have your career retrospective at the Walmart Museum or the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art? Would you rather punch a Proud Boy or marry a polygamist? Goddamn, it’s been so many months since I swapped the Tacoma out for the Astro van and it’s been at least a day straight of driving. The landscapes and documentation, the windshield and the lens, they’re all becoming one.

Side A: 25 years after that TRL hell, and we now must decide between two octogenarians – an egomaniacal bigot with dictatorial dreams and a genocidal accomplice with dementia – to lay out the blueprint to ruin our children’s lives. Will the world pull through? Do we have a reason to live? Do we only get what we give?

Side B: I walk back and forth between the Vietnamese diner and the Chinese condo, collecting other people’s trash like I’m auditioning for a TLC reality show. Sometimes I’d wonder as I wandered if anyone would appreciate these treasures as much as I do. I’d picture myself in my studio, speaking with someone I respect, as if we were on an episode of Antiques Roadshow. I’m a spiritual realist: High hopes, no expectations. I started writing, drawing, affixing, fixating…hoping, not expecting. Then it happened – a boyish man in a heavy metal hoodie told me that he believed in me. A revelation, and a road to recovery.

-Keith J. Varadi, May 2024

Ian James is an artist primarily working in photography who lives and works in Los Angeles. He has presented solo exhibitions at The Fulcrum, Hernando’s Hideaway (Miami), Five Car Garage, Vacancy, and Self Actualization (Houston), as well as group exhibitions at The Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art, the UNLV Barrick Museum, Roberts Projects, REDCAT, and Holiday Forever (Jackson, WY). He was an artist in residence at SÍM in Reykjavik, Iceland and The Wassaic Project (Wassaic, NY) and has upcoming residencies at ZK/U Berlin, Sandnes kommune in western Norway, and the Yucca Valley Material Lab. He has an upcoming monograph to be published with The Fulcrum Press. His work is held in the permanent collection at Los Angeles County Museum of Art and he is an adjunct professor at Otis College of Art & Design, Art Center, and Pasadena City College.

Keith J. Varadi is a Pittsburgh-born, Los Angeles-based artist, poet, curator, and researcher. Varadi received his BFA from Rutgers University and his MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University. His diverse projects have been executed at venues spanning international art galleries and art fairs, universities across the United States, a hotel theater in New York City, a prison in Los Angeles County, a thrift store in Minneapolis, and Dodger Stadium. He worked for the long-running television game show Jeopardy! for seven years and has additionally held positions at multiple intelligence and investigations firms. Gene's Dispensary, a socialist-minded and artist-first gallery, was opened by Varadi earlier this year in an old medical office building near MacArthur Park in Los Angeles. This will be his fifth collaboration with Et al. since 2016.

Documentation images by Evan Walsh