Stubborn becomes a horn filling the air, an ongoing announcement: "having or showing dogged determination not to change one's attitude or position on something." Stubborn. Repetition is part of the point, rubbing past painting into these "new" ones. The "abstract Morandi" - the permutations of a few simple vessels - flitting between abstraction and concrete shadows. Unsure whether these pull off the same miracle.
This torturing our social symbols. Why? What does a technical interrogation garner? What are we looking for?
Think of the promotional image and its parallel to art documentation. And then around 2011 they became the same. Where documentation had generally lagged behind the object/exhibition, the image now preceded the object. Then replaced the object. And this was useful to art's promenade - the Matthew Barney effect.
"[Cremaster was a] Levi's ad campaign of artistic hubris. Cremaster succeeded, regardless any filmic merit, on its ability to manifest excitement and intrigue as a promotional vehicle, a cultural mythos that mirrored the mythos within. At the time you could almost talk about Cremaster without having seen any of it, the image was so omnipresent. Seeing was of less import than having being able to have an opinion, know of it. Having gained traction ever since, this form of promotional vehicle cannot be understated in importance post CAD/insta etc. when pipes and what they can funnel is tantamount."
The image allowed an opinion, allowed the chatter, fostered the spread. At the same time the promotional image mirrored the structure of art - it refused resolution, instead creates a hole, a lack, that need to be filled. A gap mirroring art's life-support of eternalized "questions." Consumable without destruction, depletion. What is salesmanship in advertising, is the poetic in art.
Which is all to say (in the current vogue for promotional stills of people wearing 3D head sets staring off like Galileo into space) Martin's very lofi promo documentation is somehow alluring and perfectly opaque.
Adolescence repackaged as fashion, repackaged as art. We get it. This is vampire. The capitalist extracts value from his laborers as the artist/fashionista extracts libido from teens. The excess of energy in locker rooms. Teen boredom that sediments itself in scratched desks, keyed cars. A culturally loaded mark marring expensive glass, now for sale! "My kid could do that" becomes "my child literally did that in high school and was forced to see the school therapist." Like Michaela Eichwald at dépendance, "a school desk's attempted Baphomet comes out more as a hairy devil with tits, not really satanic at all. Because the acne poxed kid's hard desire for satanism outshines his ability to actually conjure it. (This is endearing.) ... a teenage libidinal excess that has a tendency to spill, run over, an excess energies that stain things." An artist then collects that, markets it as art. The circle of life.
Think Klara Liden repacking vandalism for its safe glossed consumption. This switches anarchy for apathy. Bored teens being the hottest. The art of that fashion runway stare, where no one smiles, why? That would be the craziest thing to wear in fashion.
Klara Liden at Reena Spaulings, Michaela Eichwald at dépendance, Leave the teens alone 1, 2
Recently received, a lovely email (yet responded, apologies), which among else broached a question of cheesiness, which long thought short: there exists an allergy to work that isn't actively in some way rejecting the viewer. Cheese cloys. And we're antagonists. Afflict the comforted and all that. At the same time, Art has an abusive history with commodifying pain and dispossession as late-stage heroism (generally after the halo reward is blocked by several feet of dirt.) So a hard time reconciling an embrace of Wong's body-ill-at-ease on one hand, with personal jade over de Nieves celebratory excess. And no flies on fruit ever prevented the consumption of a little dutch vanity. Jewels past their expiration date are in fact are historically ripe for most riche taste.
see too: Kathleen Ryan at Ghebaly Gallery
This exhibitions just smells of car showroom, huh. The point surely - the ellipsoids look like cars, liquid in time.
Benjamin Buchloh criticized my ellipsoids for having too much content. He said to me, "You haven’t even understood Carl Andre yet." I said, "Of course I understand him. But I can hardly try to outdo Carl Andre." Of course, it was exactly this "content" that I wanted to bring back into the ellipsoids so that people would say, "It looks like a spear," or a toothpick, or a boat. This associative aspect was there from the very beginning and was also intentional, but from the viewpoint of Minimal art it was absolutely out of the question and simply not modern.
See too: Isa Genzken
"There was [pre-AIDs] such a high level of connoisseurship…of everything that people like this were interested in. Of everything. That made the culture better. A very discerning audience, an audience with a high level of connoisseurship, is as important to the culture as artists. It is exactly as important. Now, we don’t have any kind of connoisseur audience. When that audience died, and that audience died in five minutes. Literally, people didn’t die faster in a war. And it allowed, of course, the second, third, fourth tier to rise to the front. Because, of course, the first people who died of AIDS were the people, oh, I don’t know how to put this, got laid a lot. Okay, now imagine who didn’t get AIDS? Okay? That’s who was then lauded as the great artists, okay? If the other people who hadn’t died, if they were alive, if they all came back to life, and I would say to them, Guess who’s a big star? Guess! Guess who has a show on Broadway? Guess who’s like a famous photographer? They would fall on the floor. Are you kidding me? Because everyone else died. Last man standing."
