Wednesday, June 29, 2022

Dozie Kanu at Performance Space

(link)

Art has no expectations anymore, there's no surprise, all subversion is already accepted. But furniture is a form with expectations and so allows for subversion. Too wonky, impractical, painful, these are the tools of the artist/designer. There's an air of relational aesthetics to the whole Open Room: art's questions are quietly traded for a function. Who needs beauty when you're being served excellent chili. Art's unicorn "criticality" gets replaced with being useful. Sort of like how Hirschorn passed off trash pavilions as utilitarian philosophy. A 100 years of critics inventing theoretical function for art, as MEANING, eventually confuses the issue. The old Indiana Jones slight of hand, exchanging heavy trash for gold. But Indy made that academic gaff, mistaking volume for weight, having never really held gold, didn't know the exchange rate. Then the temple collapses. 

The dust forms a question for archeologists. And then how you felt about the temple to begin with.