Friday, July 18, 2014

Will Benedict at Balice Hertling


Benedict revolves the art world like a key to a scene. He's probably not in charge, or even all that connected to it, but he's become an unspoken masthead, or mascot. Everyone wants some part of it, and for the last number of years he's been everywhere, in countless exhibitions seen.
Here mud encrusted corporate zombies replacing Benedict’s friends would seem a step in the direction of content, all with the musical furniture, but its a more a move, like many of Benedict’s, of bland displacement, of using blank markers in the codified gallery system, the contextual architecture of art; and like before's paper shrimps, the addendum of little washy paintings ironize the whole thing, once again displacing meaning, blankly nice. To say that these are actually starting to look better would be besides the point. It's more interesting to look at them as examples in the codified strata in the art world, gestures and attempts.