William Pope.L (American, b.1955)
Widely known for his avant-garde interventionist art, Pope.L creates work that is provocative and personal, challenging his viewers to confront uncomfortable truths about society and themselves. One of his most notable works is The Great White Way (2001), a series of performances where Pope. L crawled along the length of Broadway on his stomach, and Eating the Wall Street Journal (2000) where he chewed up pieces of the newspaper to comment on the magazine’s capitalist ideals. His self-portrait, Foraging (The Funk) explores art’s absurdism by his wearing of rabbit ears and holding a toilet brush. Artist Barbara Pollack’s portrait series of Pope.L is also on view in this exhibition.
Pope.L studied at Montclair State University, the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers, and the University of California, San Diego. He was a Professor of Theater and Rhetoric at Bates College from 1990 to 2006. His work has been showcased at major institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. He is a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship and the Guggenheim Fellowship.
