JDUSTIN was produced for Justin Cole's exhibition, Tuning, at council_st. gallery in Los Angeles, CA. The exhibition opens Oct. 14 and runs through Nov. 11, 2023. The 7" record in collaboration with Dustin Wong features a unique photographic cover by Cole printed on Epson Luster Premium Photo paper. Each cover is unique and features an image from Cole's ongoing photographic series, Yes, produced in California and Iceland! Incisive liner notes by Christina Gubala (aka Lady C).
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Justin Cole - Big Brown Eyes, Little Tiny Face/ Dustin Wong - Water Crayon
Justin Cole’s repertoire of musical art has always been distinctive for its patience. My initial encounter with Justin’s work, as both part of OJO and as small acoustic, was through a split 7” in which the former’s live rendition of Erik Satie’s Gymnopedie No. 1 commanded rapt attention with its taut, deliberate, lentissimo arrangement. It was my first brush with what I would come to know as Cole’s commitment to exploring the juiciness at the center of a stretch. His gift is an ability to draw out tertiary shades that when given time and space to reveal themselves, add profound depth to the images whose surfaces we recognize. Cole is an aural explorer whose discoveries are made via the warping of the paths carved through classic maps. His 2018 “Sounds of America” 7” release saw Cole centering his singing voice as he tackled Motown classics “What’s Going On” and “What You See Is What You Get”. The 27-second ultraviolet melody of Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” expanded to a 21-minute infrared meditation, a collaboration between Cole and Sean Smith, was aptly billed as a viscous glacier published on the heels of the 2020 civil rights uprising. Cole’s music prepares in me the notion that my time and focus will need to be dedicated if I wish to appreciate the offering in full.
As a consequence, the shimmering nimbleness of his new work took me by surprise and delight. Sun-dapped finger picking glitters across a liquid canvas. The bubbling voices of wife and child, captured like jarred butterflies and tickled towards metamorphosis, testify to the unexpectedness of both the process of creation and Cole’s defiantly kinetic end result. While the roots of these pieces are American folk songs, they glisten with an electric sheen that reregisters them temporally, uniting future and roots in a timeless suspension. The skillful hand of collaborator Dustin Wong, known for his fantastical sonic world building via complicated electronic layering, guides Cole’s works through new textural terrains, adding celestial magic to his terrestrial instrumentation. There is a curiosity to this project, a playfulness in the crickets’ symphony that ushers in a beat of silence. Cole has compressed his signature depths into two rich, bright-eyed vignettes of a kind of wistful hope, perhaps subject to the increasing sense of urgency brought about by a planet not long for this world.
Wong’s “Water Crayon” counters Cole’s earthiness as a percussive conversation between the edge of the sky and the surface of the water. Singed dub-echoes chitter like cicadas over pensive melodic strokes and raindrop patterns, summoning a scene simultaneously natural and otherworldly. The lenses through which “JDustin” view the world may be distinct, but the tenderness with which they are both viewing, and rendering for our listening pleasure, is of the same spirit. It is my sincere hope this is but the first of many collaborations to come between these two thoughtful artists.
Christina Gubala (aka DJ Lady C)
2023
credits
released October 14, 2023
Justin Cole “Big Brown Eyes” 2’20” “Little Tiny Face” 1’16”. Written, recorded and performed in 2022. Mixed by Dustin Wong. “Little Tiny Face” arranged by Dustin Wong. Mastered by JJ Golden. Produced for Cole’s exhibition “Tuning” at council_st. Oct. 14-Nov. 11, 2023.
Hand Drawn Label Text by Beatrice Cole.
Iceland images by Justin Cole and produced at SIM Residency: www.sim-residency.info/SIM-Projects/J%C3%81
Love to Khana Lacewell and Beatrice Cole.
Thanks to Kent Familton, Kent Young, and Christina Gubala! justincolestudio.com
Justin Cole is an artist and educator in Los Angeles, CA. He is currently a senior lecturer in Photography at Otis College of Art and Design. Cole was a founding member of the artist group, OJO, active from 2005-2013.
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