Fred Lonidier at Essex Street

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"1984 Benjamin H.D. Buchloh wrote '[Lonidier's] work addresses the questions of the detrimental impact that we would not normally be confronted with as a museum or gallery visiting art audience, since the system of representation that we traditionally refer to as ‘the aesthetic’ by definition extracts itself from the economic and political reality of the basis of culture in everyday life, in order to construct the aesthetic mirage that generates pleasure due to its mysterious capacity to disembody and disassociate our perception from the weights and demands of the real.'"

A blinding piece of criticism. The circuses of the aesthetic. Lonidier mending or "fixing" conceptual art's rupture of language to make it say actually something rather than serve up that effervescent lightheadedness I associate with it and deep sea fish. Ron Cook is a bricklayer or craftsperson, which is true, and there is no need to bring Tom of Finland into this despite my desires. We should attempt to recalibrate our politics not to the high drama of spectacle, but to the begrudging daily wear. Let's not get entangled with Ron's glistening bulk, but rather in how we can ease Ron's burden, even the unattractive Rons. Its hard to pay attention to these less attractive details, but this is something art and its sensitivities should be training us for is the point I guess. 

AR: Fred Lonidier at Michael Benevento

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Originally Posted: November 28th, 2016

Note: This entry is part of August Review, our annual look back at this season’s key exhibitions. For more information, see the announcement here.

Fred Lonidier at Michael Benevento

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Politics aside, which at time when a president-elect we don't like is one of few who thinks such trade agreements are up for discussion while everyone we do like thinks any discussion spells, like, imminent economic apocalypse and a current president who we didn't like but now do but as the opposite rears head and who promised to but didn't enter discussion of said trade - and so what a time for this exhibition - making a real ideological pickle indeed, the work which can't be read with any real ease here and who probably could have stood long enough there, and which proves the book it needs, and so can't easily be read anytime soon and so we interpret it at the level of surface, form becoming the content, the affectual, having all sorts of relation to today, like watching debates with the sound off and which we sometimes did, it looks pretty good.