J PATRICK WALSH 3 + NATALIE LABRIOLA

“Embassy After Dark,” a show of new work by J Patrick Walsh 3 and Natalie Labriola, centers around a “burn book” from the American Embassy in Belgrade, made between the years of 1989-1991. The artists procured the files from an anonymous former employee of the Tourist Visa Consulate of the US Embassy in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia.

The book contains government-issued ID photographs of... [read more]

“Embassy After Dark,” a show of new work by J Patrick Walsh 3 and Natalie Labriola, centers around a “burn book” from the American Embassy in Belgrade, made between the years of 1989-1991. The artists procured the files from an anonymous former employee of the Tourist Visa Consulate of the US Embassy in Belgrade, former Yugoslavia.

The book contains government-issued ID photographs of hopeful Yugoslavians applying for Tourist Visas to visit the United States, with notes and jokes scrawled over their images, applications, and official government notices. Its contents reveal a psychological space of frustration and alienation, which gives way to a black comedy of crude jokes. The screening process, which many desperate applicants attempt to deceive, becomes partially visible through these notes. The collection is a shard of humor amidst the social and political upheaval during the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this book of notes, we see the American Embassy through the lens of its disgruntled employees, as hack, would-be scam-artists offer bribes, plea bargains, and lists of cow names.

Walsh 3 and Labriola have assembled four copies of the book, recreated in its entirety. The act of forgery that is revealed in these stories is echoed in the precise replications of the book itself. The works in the show extend beyond the cubicle and onto the gallery walls; the artifacts depicted in the books providing a context in which the adjacent works by the two respective artists can be read.

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