Fixing a Whole

Julie Becker spent her life in Los Angeles. She ended it there too. Becker’s 2016 obituary appeared in Artforum three days before the artist’s first solo show in a decade closed at Greene Naftali Gallery, New York. This survey pulled drawings from all different eras of Becker’s short, brilliant, patchy career; it touted recent work, out of context. Nowhere in the curatorial statement did the word whole appear and yet since 1999 Becker had been consumed by it, the name for a project without end. Evidence of  Whole’s concerns bubbled up anyway like the boiling cauldrons Becker often drew. One work from 2015 bore the inscription “I must create a Master Piece to pay the rent. How do I do that?” And written in haste, maybe later, in answer: “Circles, circles, lots of round and round we go.”

Spiraling as a research strategy and survival necessity characterized Becker’s entire oeuvre, recalling the words…