Friday, April 5, 2019

Guan Xiao at Bonner Kunstverein


(link)

In a world governed by the cartoon, its virtuality, all things are exchangeable and appear similar enough. You can throw them all together. (and Fair symptoms that such a world in cartoon mode, accelerating homogenization would also see an equal rise in identity politics bristle against this mayonnaising.) But so it's artist's naughty fun to accelerate cultural flatenning, run impishly through borders, tie everything together, steam roll the whole thing into one vast of cultural whateverness, throw it overboard into the soup.

"The hipster too was a semionaut; whose careful balance of fashion’s signs were an additive and appropriative construction of appearance and identity, a careful facade of references, and so the concurrent rise of Rachel Harrison makes symptomatic sense for its ability to thematize semio-collapse short-circuits in a way that was jokey, pranksterish and light relief against undeconstructable-tuber confusion of “the real” having really ascended into code that both Harrison and Hipsters were obviously responding. But artists now live it, take for granted the serial construction of references fashioning artistic identity whose appropriations need make little sense, that juxtaposition is enough capable of producing all the double-binds, oxymorons, and paradoxes that the artworld prefers in a the-more-the-merrier type campaign, creating perfect mires filled with loads of interpretive juice whose glossy surface reflected the world well."

see too: Nina Beier at Metro PicturesHenning Bohl at What PipelineHenning Bohl at Karin GuentherMax Brand at Off VendomeGoshka Macuga at Rüdiger Schöttle