Harry Gould Harvey IV at Bureau

(link)

Not sure what multiplier of neo-neo-gothic we're on. As early as 2001 artists already mocked the gothic vacancy with felted craft projects of black metal's "Norwegian Romanticism" or New Gothic, Southern Gothic, before the "Digital Gothic" Modern Gothic- etc. - etc. People want the Gothic. Want the look. We reclaim it like wood. The above sculptures claimed from a Gilded Age Gothic Revival mansion. Wealthy 19th century Americans who "admired the estates of the European nobility" and saw themselves as nouveau-nobility, wanted it, recreated it. Reflected and distorted enough times, the gothic becomes a signifier without origin. Which like neoclassicism whose attempt to affect stateliness becomes McMansion Hell, the gothic becomes the safety scissors of edge. The affect of brooding power. "language that was once living and ephemeral turns from undulating patterns and waves of frequency into physical declarations that simultaneously attempt to solve social ills while imposing structural violence on those who may be marginalized."

Attached to real history to add some new bells, whistles, lockets, an affect on an affect. A look. A whole history of burning architecture to be dark and look cool. 

...an anachronism, an implicit nostalgia for the past's future, rather than our own. What the Victorians had imagined as horror, pools of blood and pendulum cuts, is far more genteel than what is our current madness. This is the pleasure-saftey of genre, it has rules.

For more conceptual wood: Venice 2019, Danh Vo, & at kurimanzutto

Kyung-Me at Bureau & Silke Otto-Knapp at The Renaissance Society

(KM, SOK)

One has its own internal world; one uses your internal world. You look into Kyung-Me's, awaiting you is a little snow globe of a world inside it. But the other reflects you, displays vessels for your pour over. Its why Otto-Knapp's feel like memories, they're projection screens for home films of your - like Koether - cultural baggage.


See too: Silke Otto-Knapp at greengrassi, Silke Otto-Knapp at Taylor Macklin, Jutta Koether at Bortolami, Jutta Koether at Museum Brandhorst

Brandon Ndife, Diane Severin Nguyen at Bureau

(link)

New forms of repulsion aren't necessarily "fun" but find interest in this evolving newness, this "becomingness" that forms the abject. Filth is only gross when we fear its spread, contamination. And we have become lovers of filth. It could feel a signifier of our political moment but it started before that. The early 2010s, 2013, Agematsu, E. Smith, Douard, Lupo, Hooper Schneider, and Thek, Tetsumi resurgence et al. It could instead be that rise of CAD and crystalline documentation - the even-white fluorescence provided the clinic - could hold filth at a distance, anti-sceptic photography for petri-dish transmission. Everything looks good in the white light of pornography, even that filth. Like we finally had the clean rooms to handle it, not just white boxes, but had invented technological gloves to package all of it:


Filth: Martin Soto Climent at Michael Benevento & Yuji Agematsu at The Power Station, May the Bridges I Burn Light the Way” at STANDARD (OSLO), Dylan Spaysky at Clifton Benevento, Max Hooper Schneider at High Art, Ajay Kurian at White Flag Projects, Kahlil Robert Irving at Callicoon Fine Arts, Ajay Kurian at Rowhouse Project,  Jason Dodge at Franco Noero, Amy Yao at Various Small Fires, Anicka Yi at Cleveland Museum of Art, Chadwick Rantanen at Essex Street, Michael E. Smith at Sculpture Center, Michael E. Smith at Michael Benevento, Michael E. Smith at Zero, Michael E. Smith at Lulu, Michael E. Smith at Susanne Hilberry, Amy Yao at Various Small Fires, Anicka Yi at Cleveland Museum of Art, Nancy Lupo at Kristina Kite & Yuji Agematsu at Miguel Abreu, Nancy Lupo at Swiss Institute, Nancy Lupo at 1857, Yuji Agematsu at Real Fine Arts,  Yuji Agematsu at Artspeak, Henrik Olesen at Cabinet, Jason Dodge at Casey Kaplan, “Ungestalt” at Kunsthalle Basel