Adam Nankervis, David Medalla in conversation with the cosmos, 2017. C-print. 31 7/16 × 23 5/8 in. (79.8 × 60 cm). Courtesy of another vacant space, Berlin [Image here slightly cropped]

David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos

On view through Sept. 15 at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles

by Bondo Wyszpolski

My initial impression of this man’s body of work was that most of it was crudely done and hastily conceived street protest art, off the cuff or on the fly. After a meander through the various rooms where the work is on display, through Sept. 15, I decided that I didn’t like it and had no interest in finding out anything further about David Medalla, a Filipino by birth (in 1938), who left his homeland at an early age and settled in London.

David Medalla, Untitled, 1973. Ballpoint pen, colored pencil, felt-tip marker, and watercolor on aluminum foil-coated board. 5 7/16 × 4 1/2 in. (13.8 × 11.5 cm). Courtesy of David Medalla Archive and another vacant space, Berlin

But when I find myself thinking this way I often recall something Michael Crichton once wrote, that if he caught himself saying something like, “No, I would never like that” or “I would never go there,” he might then challenge himself — maybe I would like that; maybe I would like going there. And he found, as often as not, that he actually enjoyed whatever it was he thought he wouldn’t enjoy. And even if he wasn’t completely thrilled, he’d learned something about an unfamiliar subject and, more importantly, about himself.

And so, in my case, I took a deeper look at “David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos,” and I realized that much of what I took for messiness was largely a sign of his exuberance. As Magalí Arriola writes in the catalog that accompanies the exhibition, “Medalla perceived life as a continual stream of change; he was constantly on the move, recasting cultural, racial, and sexual thinking.”

Of course, those words alone didn’t convince me to take a closer look at what Medalla had created, and I still didn’t think it was in any sense truly coherent. The Hammer’s Ann Philbin must have realized this early on, because she calls it an “experimental exhibition” that is closer to an overview than a comprehensive presentation, “but we do hope it inspires audiences and artists alike to pursue the unimaginable.”

Specifically, Philbin says, this is an “exhibition of artworks, artifacts, ephemera, and scraps of documentation. The exhibition is archival in nature, meaning that it constructs a historical context for thinking about the artist’s body of work… which was elusive, immaterial, and fleeting even while he was actively producing it. Instead, the exhibition constructs a portrait of an artist who never comes fully into focus.”

David Medalla, Psychic Self-Defence, 1983. C-print. 15 15/16 × 12 3/16 in. (40.5 x 31 cm). Courtesy of David Medalla Archive and another vacant space, Berlin. Photo: Guy Brett

The task of piecing together this exhibition fell to Aram Moshayedi, but David Medalla died in December, 2020, at age 82, in Manila, before Moshayedi could personally meet with him. However, Adam Nankervis, Medalla’s longtime partner, was available and willing to be as helpful as possible. And there were many other friends and sources as well, so it wasn’t like trying to uncover information about someone who’d died centuries ago.

Although there is an extensive chronology at the end of the catalog, compiled by Nyah Ginwright, these few lines written by Moshayedi convey an initial insight into the artist: “The notebooks that Medalla maintained throughout his lifetime are crammed with page after page of oiled and chiseled bodies, mostly white, mostly bare chested and shaved or waxed, in magazines and printed advertisements. While some faces are recognizable — River Phoenix, Justin Bieber, Rob Lowe, and other celebrity heartthrobs — anonymous underwear and swimwear models show just how ready-made Medalla’s sexual fantasies could be.”

An older man having sexual fantasies about Justin Bieber is a bit of a hurdle, but all of us have multiple components to our lives, and that’s just one aspect, whatever its significance in the larger scheme of things Medalla.

David Medalla, Kumbum Banners, 1972 (detail). Newspaper clippings and ink on mat board. 24 15/16 × 19 15/16 in. (63.3 × 50.6 cm). Gift of David Medalla and Adam Nankervis, in gratitude for the support and friendship of Kim and Lito Camacho. Collection of National Gallery Singapore. Courtesy of National Heritage Board, Singapore

What concerns us here are the various projects, and we’ll start with the “biokinetic” sculptures he conceived which exuded or erupted, such as “Lava Machine” or “Cloud Canyons.” Of the latter, which I picture as an overflowing bubble bath, are works that “primarily consist of soft columns of soap oozing from wooden bases and clear acrylic tubes.” They are “both autonomous and malleable, as the presence of bodies in the room changes the air currents and temperature, thus altering the shape and consistency of the foam.”

As with Medalla’s “Sand Machine,” which the artist said was a metaphor “for a future in which solar energy and sand are utilized to cultivate fertile terrain in the Earth’s deserts,” “Cloud Canyons” sounds not unlike a high school science experiment. One almost thinks that a better or more succinct name for the latter could just as well be “Suds”.

At any rate, as noted above, Medalla was constantly on the move, creatively speaking, and in 1964 he and a group of artists and art critics founded Signals London, a short-lived gallery that “supported the work of artists who engaged unconventional materials and alternative paradigms.” Artists from Latin America (like Lygia Clark) and Asia “were encouraged to experiment in ways that more prominent London galleries did not embrace.”

Perhaps the point is that offbeat or unrefined art is still art, maybe because it’s closer to its original concept and unadulterated impulse, but many of the projects Medalla was involved with seem to have been half-baked, perhaps nearer to the happenings that proliferated during the late 1960s. For example, The Exploding Galaxy was an experimental artist collective with its roots in Dada, and it germinated “The Bird Ballet” and “The Buddha Ballet”. Medalla and Paul Keeler had “imagined forms of theater that rejected hierarchy and blurred the lines between spectator and performer.” Anarchy in ballet slippers, it seems. For all that, the Exploding Galaxy imploded after neighbors complained and the police converged to close it down.

David Medalla, Self Portrait, 1984. Mixed media on paper mounted on wood. 57 × 45 in. (144.8 × 114.3 cm). Collection of Paulino and Hetty Que. Photo: MM Yu

We’ve seen a surge of political protesting these past few months, particularly among students calling for the U.S. to stop supplying Israel with bombs that it then drops willy-nilly on women and children in Gaza. As those who lived through it will recall, there was quite a bit of protesting half a century ago with the Vietnam war largely the focus of it.

As the catalog notes, “In 1970, Medalla and John Dugger founded the Artists’ Liberation Front in response to the global rise in dictatorships that were aided and abetted by U.S. foreign policy.” The goal of this organization, which later became Artists for Democracy, was to mobilize artists to work for political change. The group held tight to its ideals for a couple of years and, in the catalog, we are treated to a selection of posters and poetry, plus other writing and art.

Most of what was produced was a far cry from high art, but it was created with passion and urgency. It makes me realize that younger generations will never truly grasp what it was like to hand out xeroxed flyers on the street or to staple-gun them to telephone poles.

If you’re unfamiliar with David Medalla, you may conclude that he never achieved much success outside of a small circle of friends, if I may paraphrase the late great Phil Ochs. But in 1972, with John Dugger, Medalla constructed the People’s Participation Pavilion for Documenta 5 in Kassel, Germany, which is nothing to scoff at. However, “Despite its high attendance,” this installation “was mostly ignored by the art press.”

And then there’s Medalla’s African Liberation Drawings which he created in 1974 in support of African nations throwing off the yoke of colonization. Another series, painted on wood between 1979 and 1981, was called “Rhapsody of the Dagger and Ammonia Boy”. It was based on newspaper accounts of a miscreant who threw ammonia in the faces of passersby and then lunged at them with a knife.

David Medalla, Orpheus descending, 2015. Newspaper, nylon tapestry, strings, coins, arrow pin. 18 3/16 × 14 3/4 × 1/2 in. (46.2 × 37.4 × 1.3 cm). Courtesy of David Medalla Archive and another vacant space, Berlin

“Impromptus” was an ongoing series of pop-up performances that spanned the years 1980 to 2019, these being throwbacks of a sort to Dada and Surrealism but fueled by 1960s activism: Medalla, perhaps, in Merry Prankster mode. Starting in 1991, but also stretching out until the end of the last decade, was a collaboration with Adam Nankervis on a number of site-specific performances in honor of the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, which fell under the umbrella of the Mondrian Fan Club.

Well, the good times had to come to an end eventually, and in 2016 Medalla suffered a stroke that left him partially paralyzed. That wasn’t the final curtain, however. The “Sirens” series is a group of photographs that show Medalla’s wearied head covered with flowers and other items. These are curious images, taken by his buddy Nankervis, and it’s hard to know what Medalla was thinking of these pictures since he looks half-dead in them. I suspect he was onboard with it — because why would his impish sense of humor desert him in the 11th hour? — but it still seems like a tough way to go before making one’s final exit.

Medalla’s worldly renown may be limited, a man forever to remain under the radar of world-changing art, but he did exhibit in many countries, wrote and gave lectures, and taught classes. He knew or had met influential people. It’s unfortunate that he didn’t live long enough to see this show and to leaf through its accompanying publication. He’d surely have gotten a big kick out of it.

David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos is on view through Sept. 15 at the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles. Hours, Tuesday-Thursday and Saturday-Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m; Friday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Closed Monday. (310) 443-7000 or visit hammer.ucla.edu. ER

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