Saturday, April 15, 2023

Jesse Stecklow at Sweetwater

(link)

Stecklow takes signs and basically subjects them to any permutation that can be reasoned (though aren't necessarily reasonable.) It's generative, endless seeming. "Long associative chains." Content pulled from the air. Which was corn. Which lead to ears. You can read about it. There is a logic but it might as well be meaningless. It is merely the means to free associate another thing. Isn't that a metaphor for all art today? Conjure from air not an artwork, but a process that can endlessly generate artwork? Stecklow makes it more fun because at least the machine is transparent. Willfully arbitrary. Rhoadsian. Maybe Darren Bader. Qs of how is meaning generated? 

See too: Jesse Stecklow at Chicken Coop Contemporary & Adrian Piper at Hamburger Bahnhof