ArtRx LA
By Matt Stromberg
August 4, 2015
As any struggling artist knows, it can be pretty hard getting critics to review your show, but Jeffrey Vallance has a novel solution. In conjunction with his current exhibition at CB1, The Medium is the Message, Vallance will hold “Ghost Writers,” a séance with noted psychic Joseph Ross to channel dead art critics. Odds of reaching Clement Greenberg or Robert Hughes are pretty good considering that Vallance previously summoned the spirits of Leonardo da Vinci, Marcel Duchamp, and Frida Kahlo during a séance at the Frieze Art Fair in 2010.
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Shana Nys Dambrot
August 6, 2015
It’s impossible to know where artistic inspiration comes from. Many artists look back into history — though they tend to do this in books and museums. Jeffrey Vallance prefers to go straight to the source, staging performative séances to seek the advice of great artists who have passed to the spirit world. This process results in reliquaries and other works that the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Jackson Pollock have advised him to produce, as well as a series of “Spirit Photos” directly depicting images and messages on their behalf. At tonight’s Ghost Writers performance, Vallance and psychic Joseph Ross host a séance invoking the spirits of dead art critics, whom he hopes to convince to review his current exhibition, “The Medium Is the Message,” at the gallery.