Elijah Wheat is honored to present activist artist Johannah Herr’s third solo exhibition with the gallery,  Collateral Magic. Off-site and hosted by Mother-in-Law’s in Germantown, New York, and opening 14:00-18:00, Saturday 14 June, 2025 (in tandem with the Berkshire’s Arrival Art Fair ).  The immersive installation also promises to be a wildly fun, tantalizing destination on the Upstate Art Weekend (17-21 July) 2025 map. Collateral Magic is an exhibition and book launch aimed to provoke critical dialog about the historical role of propaganda and illusion in shaping our American reality. 

The hands-on truth-telling Herr establishes herself as a well-researched authority on ‘PsyOps’ used by the U.S. Government by way of the CIA in the later half of the 20th century. Herr uses a primary text, The CIA Manual for Trickery and Deception, as a launching point for a body of work, Collateral Magic, conceptually revolving around performative “magic” as an aesthetic, material vocabulary and metaphor for how propaganda is used to deceive the public. 

The installation begins with deep purple velvet draped covered walls, a series of “magic kits” on a card carousel, and six lenticular photographic prints. The prints are surrounded by elaborate interactive frames with flocked retro colors. Each frame comes embedded with hidden compartments containing a copy of the Collateral Magic publication as well as thematically relevant vintage ephemera. For example, “Vanishing Acts” frame contains a bullet custom etched with the names of political leaders the CIA had assassinated along with an authentic instructor’s enamel pin from School of the Americas. Another, framing the lenticular photographic print, “Slight of Hand” contains a set of red resin loaded dice (which always roll a 7 or an 11) with an authentic vintage matchbook from the Fontainebleau’s iconic “Boom Boom Room” where the CIA operatives historically met with Italian mafia assassins to plot against Castro. It’s all for sale, including an edition of 5 smaller lenticular prints of each of the large unique objects. . Playfully, Herr has also fabricated a handmade Zoltar fortune machine of lore. One can enter the cabin of Mother-in-Law’s and receive a personalized ‘reading’ spit out by the mechanical psychic and scribed by Herr’s satirical creative genius, as a take-away.

In 1957, early television magician John Mulholland, known for sleight-of-hand magic and author of magic how-to books, retired from the stage. But his “retirement” was itself an elaborate illusion, covering that he was actually recruited by the CIA to author The Manual for Trickery and Deception. Just as the series of lenticular photographic prints are an analog form of illusion, Herr finagles the toughest critic to find deception and trickery with even a glance. 

The exhibition includes a satirical ¡AGITPOP! Press publication (created in concert with longterm collaborator and writer, Cara Marsh Sheffler) which subverts a mid-century how-to magic book. Collateral Magic: From the Cold War to Forever Wars. The piece details the sordid history of the CIA as if it were a how-to magic book. This is the fifth publication Herr and Marsh Shuffler have worked on together, the first of which debuted at the Domestic Terrorism exhibition in Newburgh, NY. 

The second solo entitled, Domestic Terrorism: War Rugs from America, was the first exhibition presented in Newburgh, NY in 2020 at the 3000 sq/ft Kunsthalle on the Hudson River. The works were a series of ornately designed, well-researched, hand-tufted throw rugs (similar to authentic Afghan War Rugs)with symbols acknowledging the contemporary injustices, violent events and then-current challenges of COVID era disinformation.  

Herr debuted textile and patterned based work at EWS in Brooklyn, NY with her first solo activist exhibition Patenting Distraction September of 2018. The work was a series of vinyl drawings based on Directed-Energy Weapons- weapons that use beams of highly focused energy waves (such as sound or light) to incapacitate a target. These types of weapons are used in various capacities by US military and police for crowd control during rallies, protests and public gatherings. Behind the works on display, the gallery was transformed with vinyl wallpaper that deliberately initiated a Moiré effect. The diagram-based panels overtly and subliminally displayed deeply researched US government issued patents in the site-specific installation.

Conceptually, the work benefits all who engage with it. Regardless of one’s political inclinations–cultivating critical engagement with the images and hegemonic narratives that construct our society is key to independent thought. As Stuart Hall famously theorized in “Representation and the Media,” when we are able to crack open the structure of visual representation to expose its inherent construction, we are less apt to be lulled by it into “naturalized” acceptance.”

The Magic Collateral body of work is a speculative analysis of magic in the field, tips and tricks on maintaining the illusion of democracy, and a friendly reminder that one cannot spell ‘magician’ without the CIA.’

Mother-in-Law’s is located at: 140 Church Ave, Germantown, NY 12526. They are open Saturdays, 12PM-5PM through the duration of the exhibition. Except during Upstate Art Weekend, where they will be open 12PM-6PM, 17-21 June, 2025. 

Johannah Herr(b. 1987), she/her, is an interdisciplinary artist whose work uses subversive, colorfully patterned objects and maximalist installations to critique state-sanctioned violence in America. Herr holds an MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art (2016) and BFA from Parsons School of Design (2009). She has had solo exhibitions at Shirley Fiterman Art Center, SPRING/BREAK, Geary Contemporary, Elijah Wheat Showroom, and BRIC (all New York City), GAA (Cologne, Germany), Fjord (Philadelphia), Untitled (San Francisco) and Red Ger (Ulaabaatar, Mongolia) and group exhibitions at Pioneer Works (Brooklyn, NY), Visual Arts Center of New Jersey (Summit, NJ), Center for Contemporary Art (Warsaw) and DADAPost (Berlin). She is a Fulbright Scholar (Mongolia) and attended residencies at the Museum of Arts and Design (New York, NY), Wassaic (Wassaic, NY), IEA Experimental Projects Residency (Alfred, NY), Oxbow (Saugatuk, MI), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT), BRIC (Brooklyn, NY), SIM (Reykjavik, Iceland) and Arctic Circle Residency (Svalbard, International Territory). She was featured in the New York Times, Curbed, and VICE. She teaches at Parsons, Pratt, and NYU. Additionally, she is the Co-Founder of Daughters Rising, an anti-human trafficking NGO in Thailand. Together with writer Cara Marsh Sheffler, Herr is one half of ¡AGITPOP! Press, an artist book collaboration.

!AGITPOP! PRESS is an artist book collaboration between artist Johannah Herr and writer Cara Marsh Sheffler. Their books subvert mid century publications to critique US consumer culture, and how it enabled the collusion between the government and large corporations that fueled the American Century. This interrogation aims to explore how Americans are complicit in state-sanctioned violence wittingly and unwittingly as consumers.!AGITPOP! has published four books to date: “Domestic Terrorism,” “The Banana Republican Recipe Book,” “I Have Seen the Future: Official Guide,” and “White Flight!”—which subvert the forms of a Sears Catalog, Chiquita Banana recipe book, New York World’s Fair Guide, and Levittown circular, respectively. Their work has been featured at solo exhibitions at the Shirley Fiterman Art Center BMCC, SPRING/BREAK, Field Projects, NADA Governors Island (with the support of Geary Contemporary) (all New York, NY), Elijah Wheat Showroom (Newburgh, NY), and GAA Gallery (Cologne, Germany) and within group exhibitions at Van Every/Smith Gallery, Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, Frieze New York, Fortmakers (all New York, NY) and NADA Miami (Miami, FL). Their books are stocked by Printed Matter, Mast, Perrotin Bookstore, Karma Bookstore (all New York, NY), Exile Books (Miami, FL), and Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA).