The Dodd Galleries at the Lamar Dodd School of Art presents Derek G. Larson: Très Mall, Episodes 1-8, a survey of all eight animations from artist Derek G. Larson’s (American, b.1978) eponymous experimental series to date. Très Mall follows three teens—led by protagonist Jon—who navigate absurd adventures in a dying American shopping mall while surreal...
The Dodd Galleries at the Lamar Dodd School of Art presents Derek G. Larson: Très Mall, Episodes 1-8, a survey of all eight animations from artist Derek G. Larson’s (American, b.1978) eponymous experimental series to date. Très Mall follows three teens—led by protagonist Jon—who navigate absurd adventures in a dying American shopping mall while surreal guest interviews with artists, thinkers, and weirdos punctuate their journey through the ruins of late capitalism.
Très Mall combines the DIY ethos of underground comics with the visual playfulness of early MTV animation. It’s Liquid Television meets The Midnight Gospel by way of Ghost World. Both a love letter to lost youth and a critique of what replaced it, Très Mall is a weird, smart, and urgent animated series for our exhausted era.
Très Mall follows three artists from Savannah to New York City, led by the bleary-eyed Jon, who inherits a vacated clothing store and transforms it into a hub for his half-formed ambitions. Whether delivering a TED Talk on a Casper mattress, challenging Zuckerberg and Bezos in a dream, or endlessly pondering turning a practice space into a gallery, Jon’s plans
always stall. According to Larson, “Jon is depressed. He’s a Charlie Brown-Daria-Morty-like character who is clearly smart, but the full force of the universe presents itself to him with most of its lessons going over his head. He grasps for information, asks big questions and seeks meaning.”
Alongside Jon are intellectuals who arrive in bizarre forms: literary theorist Michael Hardt as a blue jay urging political activism, philosopher Graham Harman as a coffee cup unraveling object-oriented ontology, and Noam Chomsky as a mischievous monkey debating language acquisition. Jon’s journey also introduces Boris Groys as a chandelier on the subway,
questioning artists’ obsession with likes and shares, while philosopher Babette Babich guides him through existential dilemmas about morality and violence. Jon’s musings expand further with a cast of thinkers— Richard Florida, Emily S. Apter, Priyamvada Gopal, Nicole Sunday Grove, Steven Osuna, and McKenzie Wark—who explore the tenuous social contract, neoliberal culture, and the myth of progress in a fragmented world. Amid their surreal dialogues, Jon and his friends grapple with the limits of the law, war, white supremacy, and the exhaustion of the internet, offering no easy answers, only a wry, intellectual journey through the contradictions of modern life. Through its highbrow satire, Très Mall critiques art, ambition, and the pervasive ennui of consumer culture, delivering a surreal, thoughtful reflection on the millennial psyche.
Derek G. Larson (American, b. 1978) is an artist and animator in New York City. He’s the director of the Animation & Games Program at Fairleigh Dickinson University and previously worked as an editor at PBS. Très Mall has been screened at venues including the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Tranen, Times Square in New York City, MOCA GA, Telfair
Museums, and the Yale School of Architecture.
For more information, contact Rachel Waldrop, Director and Curator, Dodd Galleries and Atheneum: rachel.waldrop@uga.edu. The Lamar Dodd School of Art is closed on weekends, University holidays, and home game days. Derek G. Larson: Très Mall, Episodes 1-8 is supported by UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, The Lamar Dodd School of Art and the Marjorie E. West Endowment Fund. For support opportunities, contact Grace Mercer,
Development Associate: grace.mercer@uga.edu
