Suspension of Disbelief: “Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe: Sunset Corridor”

Colette Copeland
December 8, 2024

A stately room with wood panel walls and a bank of seating against the wall, underneath a kaleidoscope built into the ceiling.

Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe, “Sunset Corridor,” installation view, 2024, mixed media, dimensions variable. Courtesy of San San International © Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe. Photo: Evie Marie Bishop

A kitchen with 70s era design houses an improv laboratory with mocroscopes and obsolete science equipment on its countertops.

Collaborative artist duo Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe transformed the Modern’s upstairs permanent collection galleries into an immersive, multilayered installation. The overarching narrative is the premise that San Francisco and San Diego merge into one city. Imagine sci-fi futurism with references to the tech sector, drug and music counterculture, new-age spirituality, alchemy, and more. I’ve visited Sunset Corridor multiple times and struggled with how to frame writing about the work. The challenge is how to write about the multiplicity of ideas and references found in the installation with logical coherence. I finally gave up on that strategy and decided that I would try an experimental form. Since conceptual and visual collage is a dominant aspect in the artists’ work, my article will be a collage of sorts, decoding and deconstructing possibilities for interpretation.

A shelving unit with jars of unknown specimens lit from below with florescent lights.

A work from “Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe: Sunset Corridor.” Photo: Colette Copeland

A desk, with an obsolete yellow, computer monitor with a broken screen, is covered with books and DVDs.

A view of “Sunset Corridor.” Photo: Colette Copeland

Wunderkammer
As I walked through the myriad of rooms in Sunset Corridor, the term “wunderkammer” or room of wonder came to mind. While the original wunderkammers or cabinets of curiosities focused on colonialist-era collected antiquities and natural specimens, a contemporary wunderkammer could be a compilation of any type of object. Sunset Corridor contains copious collections. If I were a visual archeologist from the future and visited this space without the context of an art museum, I would see remnants of technology, a deserted bunker devoid of human presence with an assemblage of desiccated cords and outmoded electronics in various states of disrepair. A desk contains a series of “fake” films with humorous titles such as Droids on Roids, Living the Life of a Hard Drive, and Reach Around with Colin Feral. The second room has a 70s vibe of mad-scientist experiments gone awry with memorabilia on bulletin boards, laboratory equipment, and hybrid crystal cacti. The third room most closely resembles a cabinet of curiosities with organized shelves filled with made-up products — “fake” cakes printed with faces and containers resembling cleaning products that have stream of conscious text labels such as Nurse Safari, (Mortgage…), Fake Modigliani, Vibrator, White Girl Skag, and Amnesia Blue. The fourth room has the feel of a psychotic hoarder and is full of specimen jars filled with unknown objects/body parts. The fifth room reminds me of the Rothko Chapel in Houston — a place for contemplation and a much-needed “brain” break from the visual over-stimulation of the other rooms. I think of this room as a collection of thoughts or prayers put out into the universe. The last room has a 40-minute film, which is also a wunderkammer of sorts — a collection of video and film clips. It was unclear which, if any, were historical documentation or if it was all an elaborately constructed fiction. The artists promised some illumination from the film, but the film raised even more questions than it answered. The viewing experience is what I imagine a psychedelic acid trip might be like.

A copy machine covered entirely in black rice on a wood veneer pedestal.

A work in “Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe: Sunset Corridor.” Photo: Colette Copeland

Sculpture: assemblage, readymade, faux-readymade, altered readymade
In thinking about art materials and environmental sustainability, Freeman and Lowe reuse many materials that would ultimately end up in a landfill. In keeping with the blurring of lines between fiction and reality, it was difficult to discern which objects were meticulously hand-crafted sculptures versus altered readymade assemblage. I’m not sure it matters from a conceptual perspective, but as an artist, I am always interested in knowing how things are made. For example, there are three or more striking sculptures constructed from black rice. My favorite was the photocopier prominently displayed on a pedestal. I could not determine if it was cast from the original object or if the original object was underneath all those meticulously glued rice grains. Or perhaps the rice grains weren’t real and were some material posing as a rice grain? The subversive humor extends into the process as much as the conceptual themes and narratives. I appreciate the material experimentation, and how the artists challenge the definitions of contemporary sculptural practices.

A room with obsolete techniology on a desk against the far wall and a large translucent colored glass ceiling.

Installation view of “Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe: Sunset Corridor.” Photo: Colette Copeland

Immersion and the Suspension of Disbelief
The term immersive as it relates to art suggests a suspension of critical thinking and logic for the purpose of “buying into” the narrative. A transformation occurs where the visitor is transported to another realm. Pippilotti Rist does this well. Meow Wolf is another example of an immersive experience. While visiting Meow Wolf attractions in Las Vegas and Grapevine, Texas, I consciously knew I did not enter into the multiverse or “unreal” world. However, to understand the narrative or appreciate the event beyond the surface spectacle, I needed to make a conscious decision to ignore the fact that I was in a suburban shopping mall. For those who have experienced Meow Wolf, you are familiar with the immersive concept. Sunset Corridor provides an immersive experience where the visitor can completely forget that they are in a museum. I cannot think of another exhibition I’ve attended where the awareness of the white institutional walls falls away so completely and seamlessly. Freeman and Lowe masterfully blur the distinction between fact and fiction without the use of spectacle. I felt that I was simultaneously inside the artists’ minds as well as in another world where time (past, present, and future) collapsed.

A series of crystals and cacti sit atop a stainless steel desk.

Sunset Corridor is the fourteenth exploration into the San San world and the fifth iteration of ‘The Smile Pentagon’ series. While many objects and materials are reused, each exhibition changes as the artists respond to site specificity. It’s interesting to note that the exhibit’s location is in the former upstairs wing of the Modern’s permanent collection. How might this comment on the nature of permanence or impermanence as it relates to museum conservation? Viewing this work within a current geopolitical context, I wonder how the works’ references and meaning shift and morph due to the juxtaposition between California and Texas. With many Californians moving to Texas for better cost of living, more land, and lower taxes, how might this alter the Texas landscape and culture? Perhaps Sunset Corridor functions as both a prophecy and a warning.

In the spirit of celebrating the role of text in Freeman and Lowe’s work, I would like to offer a few other phrases that come to mind as possible directions or misdirections for experiencing and interpreting the work: Alchemy & Mysticism, Architecture of Imagination, and Nested Narratives. When you visit, allocate at least 90 minutes if you want to fully submerse yourself into the artists’ constructed world of nested narratives.

“We are concerned at some core level about jarring the visitors’ perceptions into a state of self-consciousness.” Jonah Freeman

The artists hope that as you move through the space, the unreality of their invented world seeps into our “real” world. I know it did for me and the seepage continues.

Jonah Freeman + Justin Lowe: Sunset Corridor is on view at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through January 5, 2025.