Julie Becker (W)hole, curated by Jay Ezra Nayssan, was on view at Del Vaz Projects in Santa Monica, California, from February 4 to April 8, 2023.
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…