“Tierra. Sangre. Oro.” at Ballroom Marfa

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We don't like to see labor, we attempt to believe our objects as plucked from some global production line where no one fears the coming automation because we believe everything to already be, like the seams of our clothes not already warmed by sweating hands in hot rooms, or the brushed aluminum and Gorilla glass whose machining attempts to appear seamless, the seams that stand for assembly, that collect grout, human detritus, that body we don't wish to see. When the seamless, brushless, painting disintegrated into the impressionist strokes like building blocks the bourgeois were appalled, and the desire of minimalism to once again repress the labor of the factories they got to build their work seem an attempt to return the order of the seamless virtual object, willing to align themselves against labor. Each seam, each brick representing the hands that minimalism was willing to sacrifice, lop off, repress.


See too: Judith Hopf at Museion, Judith Hopf at kaufmann repetto, Melvin Edwards at Daniel Buchholz

“Äppärät” at Ballroom Marfa

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We hear of videos documenting children attempting to turn magazine pages as if they were iPads, swiping at paper. We hear of these videos as if there are hundreds. As if children had become ethereal. Confusing the materials and their virtual counterparts. A virtual leather now. Your interface hovers over it. Virtual stone. The skeuomorphic book is a reflection of ours under the watery surface of glass. And thus physicality is linked to its virtual counterpart, and the cartoon to our meat. Digital men being cut apart still elicits disgust in the audience. We identify with concepts. Watching the concept of a man self eviscerate was more moving than watching the man. And so somehow sculpture became the way to obliquely talk about the virtual, and HD video the way to talk about the world.