Alfredo Jaar: A Logo for America, 1987 at Galerie Lelong

Galerie Lelong's Chelsea space is showing Alfredo Jaar's A Logo for America, 1987 through October 24. The exhibition looks back at an animation that ran on a Times Square billboard in April 1987, commissioned by the Public Art Fund, and follows how it has traveled and changed since.

Jaar was born in Chile and trained as an architect. Under the Pinochet dictatorship he staged public projects in the street, including one that asked passersby whether they were happy. He moved to New York in 1982, and the Times Square piece came five years later, when he was in his early thirties. It was part of the Public Art Fund's series Messages to the Public, which invited artists to make animations for the Spectacolor board. The brief loop appeared among commercial advertisements: a map of the United States marked "This Is Not America," then a flag, then the "R" in America turning into a map of the whole continent. Its point is plain. Using "America" as shorthand for the United States erases every other country in the Americas.

At the center of the gallery, in an enclosed, dimly lit room, a newly digitized version of the original animation is shown at large scale. Jaar's original storyboard drawings are on public view for the first time, giving a look at how the idea took shape. Elsewhere, photographic suites, lightboxes and videos record the first presentation and later ones: a 2014 return to Times Square, a 2016 work, a 2018 screening on a barge off Miami Beach, and versions made for modern television screens. A group of videos shows how the imagery and idea of the 1987 work have entered wider cultural and political conversation.

Other works on view include Welcome to the USA (TIME) from 2018 and How Should America Lead? (The Economist) from 2023, both dealing with magazine framing of the country. With the United States marking its 250th anniversary, the show asks what it means to be "American." Jaar is also taking part in the 61st Venice Biennale, In Minor Keys, curated by Koyo Kouoh.

For Japanese readers the issue will sound familiar, since "America" in everyday Japanese also usually means the United States. The show closes October 24, so there is little time left.