September 8 – September 29

LOS ANGELES—Monte Vista Projects presents Jeffrey Atherton: SLEEPWALKER, a solo presentation of new work by this celebrated Los Angeles-based artist. An important figure in interdisciplinary avant-garde work in Los Angeles for two decades, Atherton will be displaying nine of his haunting photographs chosen from the full set of 44 that make up Sleepwalker: A Journal of Five Events, accompanied by: 10 Rules for Better Sleep. Continuing Atherton’s explorations of the boundaries between photography, fiction and performance—for example, Notes for a Lost Play (1998) and Liddy (2004)—Sleepwalker presents a series of images arranged as journal entries outlining five sleep events. Accompanying the images, the text—10 Rules for Better Sleep—challenges our presuppositions in compelling ways. The dreamlike images represent mementoes of the visions seen during a state of disturbed sleep that has been manipulated by some outside force. The text serves as an open framework for the images, shifting their context. Atherton is interested in the displacement of the object by its photographic representation. This displacement creates issues of fragmented narrative, bibliographic ghosts, signifier/signified slippage and the photographic split between photo documentation (the photojournalistic impulse) and poetics of the photographic image (Bachlelardian concepts of image and reverie). The dizzying effects of this image/text draws the viewer into new ways to relate to experience, revealing fresh capacities of the photographic medium.