in his apartment. He said that Char-
lotte Day-Reiss, who had become im-
portant, had taken the picture. “That’s
a Wolfgang Tillmans in the back,” he
said. “We woke up one morning, it was
hot, and I’m, like, ‘Let’s make some
pizza.’ And we were naked. That’s what
you do when you’re in love. With some-
one.” He was in the process of turn-
ing the photograph into a metal wall
piece. “There’s something very mun-
dane, and this somehow moved me,”
he said. I asked if he considered
Day-Reiss a co-author of the image.
He looked at me oddly. “No, not re-
ally,” he said. “I don’t know if I would
let this be a narrative of the work. It’s
the artist’s seeing the image and rec-
ognizing the image as potent that
makes it art.”
Several years earlier, Wolfson had
met a young photographer named
Gaea Woods. After a couple of dates,
he saw on her Facebook page a photo
that she had taken of herself, styled
as Rosie the Riveter. Without first
asking permission, he printed it out
and covered it with homemade bumper
stickers. (“Wanting Love,” upside
down, is plastered across one of her
eyes.) On Instagram, he posted snap-
shots of himself, Woods, and the art
work, but didn’t mention her role in
its production. The image, which was
included in Wolfson’s first Zwirner
show, now hangs in David Zwirner’s
living room. Woods, who also went to
RISD, became a psychotherapist.
Soon after Wolfson and Woods
broke up, he began seeing EmmaFernberger, a gallery director who had
recently separated from her husband,
the heir to a prominent London gal-
lery. Wolfson posted declarations of
his love on Instagram, along with a
picture of Fernberger, naked. One in-
timate image, with both him and Fern-
berger unclothed, he turned into a wall
work, which was displayed by Sadie
Coles at Art Basel, where Fernberger’s
ex also had a booth. A sticker on the
image identifies Fernberger by name.
The piece blissfully boasts of “Desire,”
“Honesty,” “Energy,” “True(ness),”
“Real Love.” It is as close to a love
letter as anything in Wolfson’s œuvre,
but as a total art work—one that con-
siders the response that it evokes, the
way Wolfson’s representatives insist
his best work does—it is startlingly
cruel. “His attitude is, may the bridges
you burn light the way,” Sarah Mc-
Crory, a curator who supports his
work, told me. “He knows he’s antag-
onistic, but I’m not sure how much
he minds.”
Wolfson would like to be thought
of as a maker of fictions. But an art-
ist who uses first-person monologue
and images of himself invites people
to read his work as autobiographical.
His social-media performances of love
and intimacy—often documenting
preternaturally attractive women va-
cationing with him—are mirrored in
his practice. When I asked him re-
cently about putting girlfriends in his
art, he became grumpy and withdrawn.
“There’s a long tradition of artist’s
muses,” he said. “And I never put them
in major art works. I don’t want to
implicate my exes.” He attributed any
discomfort these women might now
feel to manipulations by others or post-
breakup remorse. Later, when I raised
the topic again, he said, “I’m not in-
terested in defending myself. I’m not,
like, a gubbslem, Swedish for ‘gross
male.’ I’m just trying to be in the world
and see its distortions and have it come
out in my shape. I’m flawed, and I’m
not resisting that.”
I called one of Wolfson’s former
girlfriends recently, looking for in-
sight. “I’m a little worn out of talking
about Jordan, ’cause I talked to Jor-
dan yesterday,” she said. “I want to
make sure I can answer lovingly.”
Later, she texted me that perhaps it60 THENEWYORKER,MARCH16, 2020
In “Colored Sculpture,” a dummy is brutalized to a soundtrack of classic soul.