Precious Okoyomon at Mendes Wood DM

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The cultural weaponization of neoteny, cuteness, kawaii on innocent populations of children should be studied. It could be thought a capitalist mass psychologic operation were it not oft excused as a natural selection, evolution. i.e. Children cute to their parents/societies are at an advantage. Dolls cute to children incite demand, create growth. Their eyes grow ever larger like Disney rodents, their butts ever more Venusian, a natural selection of commodities. But the cartoon bear is a genetically modified organism. More like your dog. Bent by artists as caricatures of your desire. And our culture's animated fauna seem purpose built. Pikachu, Care Bears, Labubu et al. are the new gargoyles, arranged on our churches to steer children toward its higher power, sugary cereals, cartoon commercials, gacha casinos. Gargoyles were the stick of hell, hyper cuddly bears the desirous carrot to capital. Grimm's fairy tales moralism became too grim, but a pleading-eyes GMO mass manipulation, equally moralistic, we condone. This is what Paul McCarthy's pillaging those Disney Princesses seemed after, an inverse subliminal moralization, all Grimm mythos on our plastic babies. Same here.

see too: We identify with cuteness, with the interminable wet-eyed critters of Disney, Pokemon, whatever latest commodified and neotenic rodent. Cuteness' pressure causing Pugs' eyes to bulge and esophagus to choke. (The stunted bone structure of Pikachu leaves him in constant pain.) And Landers' plaid animals, sad clowns, and now a pinocchio "plankboy" are the means of a lesser sort of identification. Landers' characters are not focus-group perfected. 

Cuteness is a gargoyle, the policing gremlins of Gothic architecture dispersed into media, into Pikachu, politically kneading your desire into acceptable dough. Cuteness creates artificial identification, forces sysmpathy, care, for an object its church. You become sympathetic to their cause, the militarized demons of the holy police state, Pikachu. 

"Konrad Lorenz argued in 1949 that [cuteness] triggered nurturing responses in adults and that this was an evolutionary adaptation which helped ensure that adults cared for their children, ultimately securing the survival of the species. Some later scientific studies have provided further evidence for Lorenz's theory."

...and Rantanen has made them to overwork themselves, speed demise, intentionally crafting kawaii critters to abuse their labor-force in the circuits of his machinery. The gestures seem less absurd than frustrated, Rantanen's exacerbation of late-stage-capital's more aggressively abject objects.

Babies are, by definition, pathetic

Nuri Koerfer at Neuer Essener Kunstverein

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Bruce Nauman's One Hundred Fish Fountain, contained 97 fish. He made fountains throughout his career, surely interested in the nihilistic absurdity of the fountain as ubiquitous cultural motif(?). What is a fountain? Not quite art, nor quite architecture, no longer quite infrastructure. It is a peacock of public object. Uselessly functioning. Nothing more Naumanian than a public fountain, particularly a 100 fish fountain with 97 fish. The lure of pointing out the error of a 100 fish fountain containing 97 fish is trap of expecting rationality in the absurdity of fountains, hosing the air. Questions of why fall apart. It's simply nice to see air get wet, a bookshelf get fish, this is how the world used to be, decorative, useless.

Eric Wesley at Pio Pico

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The unexpected next step is the Wesley game - artworks, identity, like endless non-sequitur, digression, absurdity. Instead a "philosophical bait" - go play Freud with these clams and missiles - this is the game of art, our MMORPG, the artist creates a puzzle and you solve it for him. Yes, this. 

See too: Because [art] deputizes us detectives, which gives hope. "A mystery! A mystery! Where can I lay meaning?" Art's interpretability is its highest duty. The crime scene and art are both given this role. The movie detective, the painting, both allow mystery's possibility of answers, thus light the candle that there is an answer.  Provide the possibility to believe in interpretation, giving a truth-potential without having to actualize answers. Interpretation, made as interminable as possible, already provides the same comfort as answers because it enacts the genre, creates art, which assumes meaning.

Scott Benzel at Phase Gallery

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A show named after the ancient ways of mirror gazing. As a means to communicate with spirits. What do you see reflected in a black mirror? A perfect analogy for art. Our apophenia on overdrive. What do you see in the void? How does your brain make sense in noise? From meaninglessness? We make art, see a face in toast, a spirit in rock. All of art is laboratory of it. Prisoner's cinema.

See too: "On Kawara's One Million Years versus here's dice roll over a Million Random Digits. ... art becomes the casino of picking digits, making meaning, manufacturing rarity."

Shinpei Kusanagi at Altman Siegel

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How far these painting seems. It enhances their fog, an increase in atmosphere between you and subject like rain. Yes, it's the same photographic distance as say Stephen Pace at Altman Siegel, but these recede even further, the fabrics imbibe their melting ice cream, slurping them into the canvas an impenetrable window away.

David Benjamin Sherry at Nicelle Beauchene Gallery

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From the success af Klint on shopping bags to the dredging styles of the Santa Fe transcendentalists - there's something in the air wanting spirit. But you can't mention god in a press release. (The word spirituality was only recently allowed back in the gates.) So the landscape is a neutral country, a naturalism speaking to god with alibi of the secular. But we want belief in more. A common side effect of nervous time. We want the landscape rendered as spectral presence, to see safety in the sharp corners of the world commanded hazard-yellow by higher powers. Now beg for the higher powers Polke once provided.  

Emma Reyes at Crèvecoeur

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The point is, give your inkblot a shape. Let the shape sweat out something to be seen. Not to interminably serialize a single spilled question mark. There is something to be seen here. In the sweating flesh of a tomato jacuzzi. We don't know what it is but it is to be seen.

See too: inkblot