MAKING MY WAY DOWNTOWN
As I’m writing this text, Vanessa Carlton’s A Thousand Miles has 420 million views on YouTube alone. A simple yet unmistakable piano riff made it one of the most recognizable pop songs of the early 2000s. Still, without its repetitive chord arrangement, many listeners may struggle to recall its lyrics.
During his 2017 tour, Mac DeMarco and his band covered the song in some of their performances. The opening keystrokes brought out both ecstatic cheers and a collective lowering of the audience’s guard. In the original, Carlton opens with, “Makin’ my way downtown,” a line she repeats only once more throughout the track. In his Paris Rock en Seine rendition, DeMarco repeated those same words at least 24 times, gleefully ignoring the rest of the lyrics.
Known for his irreverent approach to live shows, DeMarco infused the emotional ballad with a playful, slightly ironic edge while still showing genuine admiration for the original. Fans praised the cover for its unexpected charm and DeMarco’s ability to make the song uniquely his own. They didn’t seem to care whether the performance stayed true to Carlton’s version; instead, they embraced the joke and leaned into its absurdity.
Faced with the task of drafting an exhibition text, I found myself reflecting on my own history with art. Despite having played various roles in the field over the years — almost by accident — I remain, first and foremost, a fan. A mentor of mine, one of my favorite artists, used to say, “I’m the closest you can get to being an artist without being one.” I may never have figured out how to paint a hand — which he excelled at — but I think I’ve managed to one-up him there.
Still, I couldn’t shake a lingering skepticism. How much impact can a few words printed on 80gsm paper — destined for landfill, or at best, a recycling bin — really have on someone’s experience of an exhibition? Do words make art better? Maybe. Can they make it worse? Almost certainly.
Context shifts depending on who’s hitting the keys, and bearing the brunt of writing about people who have invested their entire life and energy into their pursuit comes with a responsibility I’d rather avoid. “You hold the baby!”
That said, I hold unashamed admiration for the living artists featured in this show, all of whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing both personally and professionally. As for those no longer among us, their work has left an indelible mark — not just on how I see art, but how I see life itself, which they all seemed to place far above the former.
Through their varied approaches to refusal and reproduction, these artists generate new forms — not resolutions, but mutations. While their work may dabble in rejection, it also acknowledges the inevitability of mimicry, subtly reproducing what it seeks to escape. Fugitive yet adhesive, it clings to the contours of its predecessors and amplifies them, like an echo… and a touch of reverb.
And sometimes, the cover is just better than the original.
MARQUISE
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MARQUISE, an independent exhibition project founded in 2017, operated from a residential apartment in Lisbon with the aim of building connections and affinities between local and international artists. Resisting the geographic isolation of Portugal’s “end of the road” location, the project sought to navigate the logistical and conventional challenges inherent in presenting these artists through commercial galleries and/or institutions.
