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Monday, September 8, 2014

Ed Atkins at Serpentine Gallery

Ed Atkins at Serpentine Gallery

Let’s call them the render-stentialists: Atkins, Wolfson, Stark, Helen Martens. They're all good.
Wolfson and Marten’s hipster symbol-shorting mire; Stark & Atkins detached digital-self-subject Nausea-ics; funnily all producing souvenir posters, awash in juxtaposition branding, amazing how similar the tchotchke-trophies made for big game collectors. Wolfson’s got the upper hand on his posters laden with teenboy bedroom mythos, self-annealing; though one would have to admit Stark’s collages are a bit more “real."
No possible acceptable comment on the fact that opposing Atkins' empty surrogate self will be a “durational” exhibition by Marina Abramovic. We’ll all just give each other the eyes over that one.
But so, Atkins videos initial tapping-on-the-glass grating solipsism generally softens over the course of viewing time, ceding an actual emotive plea opposing Wolfson’s building manipulative inflammation, and so one would wish here for more than two minutes of viewing time. Wolfon’s black face actually achieves more nuance here in Atkins directness, called out in its explicitly written on “his” face: troll.