Tuesday, June 5, 2018

Ken Okiishi at Reena Spaulings


(link)

By throwing their stuff, themselves, into the ocean they were able to keep a freedom, their lives, a paradox that Okiishi has obvious misgivings over placing current lives back in the desert buried. Stripped of your heritage how free did you remain, the question. Now Okiishi, a new transport of history towards oceans which left the LA Times wondering what was in the puppet head box rather than the seemingly more pertinent question of this displacements of an Ames Iowa basement's catalyst. No one packs up a van without reason, a much less exciting white Ferrari of Okiishi's time vehicle, precisely one car load, kept, allowed into the future. The amount one can carry. What can be preserved as our possessions-as-selves eroding in time streamlined against current's abrasion. Which amass more in new homes. What will be the last object of yours finally cast into waste by your children? Objects carry briefly into tomorrow, but the artist is allowed attempts to loft their objects onto the generational ships of museums, while entire histories of others are and have been lost. Like Dahn Vo's attempt to carry Martin Wong's possessions, or even Cianciolo's corrugate time vessels, we allow a certain amount of artistic provenance into the future, and all the hope for it.


See: Susan Cianciolo at Modern Art