Justin Beachler and Sam Dybeck: NARC (2024)

7 x 4.125 in
40 pages
ISBN-13: 979-8-9850425-8-0
First edition, 75 copies

Released on the occasion of NARC, a two person exhibition of new works by Chicago-based artists Justin Beachler and Sam Dybeck considering trust, wellness, media literacy, sensationalism, and the pseudo-intellectual.

“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. [...] 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.”

NARC | Justin Beachler and Sam Dybeck