Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw, The Temporary Museum of Vaseline in Perth Amboy -Dive, 2010

‘Parafacts and Parafictions: Helguera, and Blachly & Shaw’ is an evening of performance-presentations organized in conjunction with the exhibition Companion, curated by REV- and currently on view at EFA Project Space. Pablo Helguera and Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw will enact live components to their projects included in Companion, followed by a Q & A session moderated by Marisa Jahn, artist and exhibition curator.

Introduction
Art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty offers a definition of the term ‘parafiction’, a term used to describe an emergent genre of artwork that plays in the overlap between fact and fiction: “Like a paramedic as opposed to a medical doctor, a parafiction is related to but not quite a member of the category of fiction as established in literature and drama. It remains a bit outside. It does not perform its procedures in the hygienic clinics of literature, but has one foot in the field of the real.” If a ‘parafiction’ operates in that space between fictional and real, alongside this term we might position a second: a ‘parafact’—an artwork that more stringently draws from the real—but a ‘real’ whose narrative is so curious, exquisite, or implausible so as to call into question its own veracity. Pablo Helguera, and Jimbo Blachly & Lytle Shaw’s performance-presentations engage both of these tacts. In so doing, the artists raise questions about the function of truth and fiction—its bearing on knowledge, ethics, or aesthetic transformation.

Description of the Works
'The Temporary Museum of Vaseline in Perth Amboy' is the latest iteration of J. Blachly and Lytle Shaw’s ongoing research into the cast of characters known as the ‘Chadwick family.’ While following up leads about missing Chadwick family relics in the New Jersey city, the duo instead stumbled upon the possibility of naturally occurring Vaseline springs in the region.

Pablo Helguera’s 'What in the World' replicates a popular television show from the 1950’s in which artifacts were presented to a team of archaeologists, artists, and aficionados to decipher. Adapting the show’s theatrical conventions for a You Tube generation, Helguera departs from the objects to focus on the eccentric museum staff, positioning the institution itself as the subject of the ethnographic inquiry.

This event includes a special pre-launch presentation of Helguera's new book, What in the World? (Jorge Pinto Books, 2010). What in the World consists in a collection of biographical essays around larger-than-life, and often eccentric individuals who played key roles in the history of the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology of the University of Philadelphia.

BIOS

Jimbo Blachly was born in Orange, NJ in 1961 and moved to New York City in 1990. One-man shows of his work have been organized at Elizabeth Harris Gallery, NY (1999) and at Esso Gallery, NY (1997). His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Gallery Campo + Campo in Antwerp, Belgium (1999), at the Brooklyn Museum of Art (1997), at the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY (1995), and at the Drawing Center, NY (1993).

Pablo Helguera (Mexico City, 1971) is a New York based artist whose work often adopts the format of the lecture, museum display strategies, musica l performances and written fiction. Helguera has exhibited or performed at venues such as MoMA, PS1, the Royal College of Art, London; 8th Havana Biennal, PERFORMA 05, Havana; Shedhalle, Zurich; P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; Brooklyn Museum;MALBA museum in Buenos Aires, Ex-Teresa Espacio Alternativo in Mexico City, The Bronx Museum, Artist Space, and Sculpture Center. His work has been reviewed in many art publications such as Art in America, Artforum, Frieze, Afterall, and the New York Times. He has received awards such as the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and a Creative Capital Grant. He is the author of eight books including The Pablo Helguera Manual of Contemporary ARt Style (2005) and Theatrum Anatomicum (And other Performance Lectures) (2009). He is currently the Director of Adult and Academic programs at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Lytle Shaw is a New York-based writer whose books include Low Level Bureaucratic Structures: A Novel (Shark, 1998), Cable Factory 20 (Atelos, 1999), The Lobe (Roof, 2002), and Frank O’Hara: The Poetics of Coterie (Iowa UP, 2006). Since 2004 Shaw has co-edited the Chadwick Family Papers with the artist Jimbo Blachly.

Marisa Jahn is an artist, curator, educator, and writer who co-founded REV-. www.marisajahn.com