Sam Anderson at Rowhouse Project

(link)

There is rarely an object of Anderson's we don't look down upon, that you don't watch where you step, a presentation whose, like early Wilkes or Aran's tables, dust settled marks this specific instance foreboding its wind, isolating its moment like Manders' cat at night cast in metaphorical bronze, or the Kelleyian arena which situates creatures (even while attacking its sentimentality) as an offering, like a little dog rolling over exposing belly's soft pink skin veiling easily destroyed guts, people we stand over, Perniceian vulnerability, an emotional connection to things that require our care.


See too: Cathy Wilkes at Kunstmuseum Linz, Cathy Wilkes at Tramway, Sam Anderson at Tanya Leighton, Sam Anderson at Off Vendome, Manfred Pernice at Galerie Neu, Manfred Pernice at Regen Projects

Ajay Kurian at Rowhouse Project

(link)

Take a casino, and continue to supply power to it. With an insulation sprayer filled with soupy oatmeal, grass seed, and used band-aids in 40/40/10 mixture, spray in sporadic bursts over the interior. Turn to ON the produce misters piped into equal distribution throughout the casino's byzantine carpeted floor. Set the foggers on "Jungle." The aquariums should be clean. Open the amphibian cages, let loose several roombas. Animatronics from several Chuck-E-Cheeses should be stripped of their flesh and set in small pools of shallow water, still horrifically signing. When properly weighted the iPhones will levitate. Leave the faucets run. Scatter around the refuse of humanity. Allow ample wide fields of uncontrolled voltage to go unchecked from large gauge wires. Plug everything in. Lock the door and leave for 10 years. Upon the decade, proceed to cut up the architecture into small manageable sizes and distribute into white rooms of galleries over the entire continent to speak to the future. What is interesting is the names that these objects will fall under will have an endless micro-differentiation of aesthetics, have totally different meanings to them.

See too:  “Flat Neighbors” at Rachel Uffner, Hans-Christian Lotz at Christian Andersen,Yuji Agematsu at Artspeak, “RR ZZ” at Gluck50, Yuji Agematsu at Real Fine Arts, Mathis Altmann at Freedman Fitzpatrick Altmann, Olga Balema at Croy Nielsen, David Douard at Johan Berggren, Nancy Lupo at Wallspace, Katja Novitskova at Kunsthalle Lissabon, Anicka Yi at Cleveland Museum of Art, Transformer Station, Florian Germann at Gregor Staiger, Timur Si-Qin at Carl Kostyál, Ben Schumacher at Musee d’art contemporain de Lyon, Anna Uddenberg and Nicolas Ceccaldi at MEGA Foundation,  Pamela Rosenkranz at Karma International, “Being Thing” at Centre International d’Arte et du Paysage & Treignac Projet, Michael E. Smith at Sculpture Center

Zak Kitnick at Rowhouse Project

(link)

Kitnick in the wasteland of a collapsing distinction between commodities and art. Hamilton Beach trading in the same nebulous affects of today's semio-surrealism. The reptilian effects of consumer language, our love for art becomes indistinguishable from our love of products. The product, kin art, become its packaging: images as totems for desire. The objects conjure a semio-construct, and we do battle with a hypnotic ghost manifested. The affect is the object. Basically the point is Hamilton Beach, et al. have entered the field playing high level game of avant-garde animism that art is trying to catch up to, conjuring spectres of occult need. I'm not convinced speculative realism has anything helpful to offer art (philosophy another question) that couldn't be deduced from some post-baudrillard semio-construction that seems to have gotten away from us, playing upon us. Not from the objects themselves but a symptom of a market ecology. I don't even know what this packaged object is, but I desire it, a unique piece of trash.

See too Michael E. Smith at Lulu , Sophie Nys at Crac Alsace , "Paris de Noche" at Night Gallery , Pentti Monkkonen at High Art , Yuji Agematsu at Artspeak

Trevor Shimizu at Rowhouse Project

(link)

Different than Josh Smith for whom production proves the product, Shimzu’s premised on paintings readymade product, that so long as it is painted, so long as it is painting, it is already done. Enjoying Shimzu’s poor materials because something is there, depicted, and that is enough, way more than most.

See too : Ann Craven at Comfort Moderne , Albert Oehlen at Skarstedt