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Continuously amazing, Josh Smith's ability to produce a tasteful painting today. And Værslev too an incommensurate tastifying of painting identities smoothed and well worn into comfort: the softness of acid-washed history, whose untreated denim is stiff, abrasive, and has edges that Værslev happily washes away, with the already pre-distressed historical material. Gerberian friend support is made as a kind of joke, of painting "off-the-shelf," readymade and there's a story Værslev tells in interviews, of the shelf origin in which in his final moments at the Städelschule, and tormented years since his last paintings -"for three years and a half I did not paint, not a single drop of paint" - and encouraged heavily by professor de Rooij, he makes a painting to his (Værslev's) mother's specifications: useful and pink with a shelf for her flowers to prevent stereo ruination and does so, paints the pink shelf with the flowers, and this success deemed by professor student and ostensibly mother seems an apt in describing its continuation today meeting demand for a market, giving the people what they want, a comfort.
See too: Fredrik Vaerslev at Centre d’Art Contemporain Passerelle
