A duo exhibtion with Justin Beachler at Grunts Rare Books
The narc-etype is appealing—an attitude of relating to the world through a prism of rarefied insight: a truthteller. To narc is a basic human instinct; survival before indifference depends on the narc’s ability to collect information and manipulate it into understanding.
Without certainty in a grand narrative, the counterculture of the American 60s and 70s sought transcendence in alternative systems. The hippie dream caught on, and the sheer quantity of new spiritualities—infused with Eastern philosophy, mysticism, and personal enlightenment—created a vacuum for intellectual authority. For a generation bereft of coherent leadership, a figure of pseudo-spiritual enlightenment who offered the illusion of insight and direction became increasingly necessary.
Gurus of the time—Timothy Leary and Charles Manson among them—offered visions affirming the immediate need for cultural transformation, each achieved through varying degrees of mystical discipline and psychedelic mediation. Paranoia, always an undercurrent, emerged as the dominant principle, fed by insights into the mind-control experiments federal intelligence agencies performed on civilians seeking free love and psychedelics. These revelations, alongside murmurs of COINTELPRO infiltrations into radical movements, exposed counterculture's defenselessness to manipulation even as it protested it.
The desire to simulate escape from the mundane and tragic decade, by imagining oneself at the center of a different grand and hidden truth—proved timeless, as seductive then as it is now. Paranoia delivered today’s Great Dissociation, and among so many facts to choose, the narc, a figure who stands apart from the masses—insulated by their proprietary interest in information—has never been more prominent.
Today, the narc is an anonymous figure with any number of followers operating in gaps of collective uncertainty. By signaling to depth without requiring it, the work of a contemporary narc acknowledges distance and conspiracy to no resolution, engaging at face with the contradictions of the moment and moving forward with them. The narc waves a flag. In doing so, the narc is a flexible observer and active participant in the construction of meaning, a filter through which chaos can be read clearly.
Far from a solipsistic pursuit, the narc’s engagement with truth stresses the constructedness of knowledge by suggesting a different narc could have built it otherwise. The narc’s popularity is in their brazen ability to snitch. Meaning here is a manipulable and participatory structure, and the narc makes islands with it.
-Taylor Payton
“Love Takes Care”, 2024
Sam Dybeck
Ashtrays, cast resin, salted almonds
Dimensions variable
“LA Noir”, 2024
Sam Dybeck
Acrylic, gelatin, artificial lemon flavor, pigment, inkjet prints
Dimensions variable
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“What Keeps Me Sharp”, 2024
Sam DybeckPortable toilet, casters, lionsmane capsules
21” x 14” x 14”
“It's a hard pill to swallow so I will probably sniff it”, 2023
Sam Dybeck
Inkjet print, custom friendship bracelet, resin, artist frame
20” x 16” x 1.5”
“Love Takes Care”, 2024
Sam Dybeck
Ashtrays, cast resin, faux seashells
Dimensions variable
“White Album”, 2024
Sam Dybeck
Toner, paper, PVA glue, found object, cast resin, acrylic, faux crystals, generic sleep aid capsules
36” x 8.5” x 5.25”
“Participation Trophy”, 2024
Justin Beachler and Sam Dybeck
Laser engraved aluminum
12” x 8” x 1”
