Group Show at Group Show at Group Show

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Group exhibitions have become like scrolling a feed of a feed, exhausting. Whereas before the smorgasbord provided little nouveau bites of artistic palates, now the particalizing of everything into little squares, fractured sent and scrolled has become the little bites we accumulate as dinner, gorging on snacks. The group show ostensibly provides more orchestrated snacking, but it is snacking nonetheless. Does anyone feel satisfied after of a buffet of bites? No, you feel sick. That's what group exhibitions feel like, hors d'oeuvres to a meal that is, contemporarily, not coming. The world no longer has meals it is a feed. A continuous heterogeneous bin. We want a reprieve, a moment of contemplation, any kind of slowness, relief, I don't want to open my eyes and see 50 artists anymore.

Past: Klara Liden

"At best Liden's "examinations of the anxiety of urban space" demonstrates the fraughtness on which society rests: flippantly publishing the keys to city, (e.g. bolt cutters and flashlight); implicit threat of artist's desublimating their profession bashing a bicycle to death (see too: real violence); or the small smile of this exhibition's theft of things that delineate private property (i.e. stealing the things that make private property possible). Bristling the small hairs separating us from chaos. Feel the rush of anarchism from the safety of the institution...""At worst wonder whether the rich whose wealth rely on this power that Liden ostensibly undermines don't feel some sort of safety in the irony of owning these"


 Klara Liden at Reena Spaulings (1), Klara Liden at Reena Spaulings (2), Klara Liden and Karl Holmqvist at Kunstverein Braunschweig, Klara Lidén, Alicia Frankovich at Kurator

Marianna Simnett at Kunsthalle Zürich

The documentation here comes from at least three different Museums: the, as stated, Kunsthalle Zürich, but also Frankfurt's MMK ZOLLAMT, and the above image from NYC's New Museum. Glitches as evidence of dislocation, of images just completely adrift at this point, does it even matter at this point, who cares at this point. Put anything anywhere, the video-stills are photoshopped in anyway. Drag and drop. An exhibition appears. It's the metadata that counts. How far can we dissociate. Someone should standardize the museum, to be more like the suburbs its already become, you could find anything anywhere, a McDonald's like a Guggenheim, in every metropolis, a LOVE sculpture in every park, tastes standardized across continents, fly to Zurich and still feel at home with real New York artists or cheeseburgers, anywhere. Is this dissociation?


See too: Nairy Baghramian at Walker Art Center?

Jutta Koether at Galerie Buchholz

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Well these are as ugly as they come. There is almost weight to the ugliness, like it sags off the picture, obese with garishness. Koether seems continuously giving painting an excess content, the hyperlink references, the hung on glass, adding layers until it's gluttonous, unwieldy, here: bloated.


See too: Jutta Koether at Bortolami, Jutta Koether at Museum Brandhorst

Jutta Koether at Museum Abteiberg

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I had always wanted to take a Morandi painting out of its frame, hang it on a glass wall, and write an essay about erotics and pornography.

Past: Jutta Koether

"but whereas today’s puzzle painting exists as a kind of confounding delay of symbol's comprehension, Koether's over-saturation never a maze but a hyperlink version..."
"what you're looking at isn't what you're looking at: what you're looking at is cultural baggage, garbage piling your sentience. It floating to the surface like diapers, the noise of signal and symbols. You can't see purely, you are clogged with reference."

Click here for full Jutta Koether at Bortolami, Jutta Koether at Museum Brandhorst

Win McCarthy at Atlantis

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As updates on Kelley's arenas, tchotchkes on blankets, these add a box. It's a more literal symbol of repression that Kelley's, an artist with a lifelong interest in cultural repression, had left as perfume. These are like Brad Pitt crying "What's in the box?" The PR narration's spells it out ominously: "we tend to have to wait to find out what’s lying beneath" like a Kevin Spacey line. What's latent in a culture? And it's again literal, turns out the clown was a pedophile. A joke we've heard before.