Josh Kline at Various Small Fires

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The PR states this "explores the catastrophic implications of America’s political dysfunction." No, it doesn't. For the students in the room this is called "puffery" "a promotional statement or claim which no 'reasonable person' would take literally." A generous read is that it is simply an anti-display, inverse to the usual ebullient displays of US nationalism, the equivalent of how in high school I wore a t-shirt with an inverted flag and thought that was cool. This is Piss Christ but with a flag in a TV and stained. A perhaps formally interesting technique (like, how did all those clowns fit in that car) this should have been one of those quiet shows you use to make a buck in a new city but now boom it is on CAD and mildly soiled underpants for everyone to see.


see too: Josh Kline at Modern Art

Josh Kline at Modern Art

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Deploying the strategies of retail spaces, SFX, digital tech, political adverts, i.e. the corporate technologies that prove, with money, you can deform the world to your whim, mold plastic to your hand, replicant people in bags, get dream Obama to pass basic income. It's Magrittean dream-tech for the whatever you can buy sort. Now 3-D printing the apocalypse. Enemy or ally to its strategies, everyone wanted to Instagram Kline's militarized Teletubbies, proving them valid in an economy of attention, the high-production gloss of mass culture virtually demands it.


See too: Venice vs Triennial, Timur Si-Qin at Carl Kostyál