Tony Hope at von ammon co

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"What is true about our world is that the teenage years return as powerful forms of commodity."

They're remaking everything these days. Monuments to our childhood, sold back to us, bigger more iridescent with nostalgia. Hope's previous exhibition at von ammon co. presented an interesting allegory for the problem of art's "content" - replacing the prestige framework of painting with the more aesthetically neutral minigolf. Both host content but no one pretends mini-golf has anything to say about its Nightmare - its content is merely the lure to get you to play mini-golf. If Art's prestige genres doesn't have some magical property rendering its content "critical," and painting/golf/sculpture's image is all viewer lure, then what is art's attraction to ICP adorned PlayStation character sculptures? There is a  correlation in the price of vintage autos' manufacturing dates with adolescence - peaking when those teens later in life have money to buy back their childhoods, place them in showrooms.

Catharine Czudej at von ammon co

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"the feigned resistance of the artists"

Admittance: I cried in the Rothko Chapel, left for fear of making scene. In an intellectual sense it was sham, big dumb paintings, built with a church! At the same time what unbelievable lengths to go for an artist to say, "no." Building such an elaborate stage only to wilt and retreat at its presence. I know the feeling. If Reinhardt rhetorically proclaimed the last paintings, then Rothko had accidentally found them, a trap, and so, retreated, eternally. It felt accidental, unintended, which was the pathos. Like, oops, all abyss. But now, "Reinhardt’s dictum of his as the last paintings taken as a challenge rather than rhetoric, certain artists since race to end painting in an escalating torture-porn of it." But now, now you can just turn off the lights. And since we believe, god or art, someone, somewhere, will turn them back on, we live forever. So long as the generator runs. 

Timur Si-qin at von ammon co

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An ad campaign for the earth? There's a pitch deck (or "white paper"), a .faith website, and an essay proving this isn't ironic. Arguing capitalism and corporations as inherent historical extension of western judeo-christianity with all its implicit bad values. Which then using those corporate strategies to promote a new religion, which is itself, which is an artwork, for your display. It's all very en abyme. Ostensibly this is using the machine to kill the machine. Or at least a publicity project for a new religion to destroy the machine. A publicity campaign to end publicity campaigns. I might be confused with what floor of irony we are intended to exit on, but these techno objects are firmly pro-environment. The glowing landscapes are to make you appreciate the earth, or hate its rendering, I'm not sure, but they look like techno fantasy. 

See too: Timur Si-Qin at Carl Kostyál

Alex Bag, Jason Yates at von ammon co

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What should we call this? Paul McCarthy to Alex Bag to today's schiz-u-tainment? Now militarized Teletubbies and Hollis Frampton with Hollywood soundtracks, the animistic televisual resurrections. The artiste tonally dissonant entertainments, the slapstick affect, the emotive we can turn on and off like rain. What is this? Was this. Who is writing the big thing about this? What have we made of this? Reassess, take stock, congeal something....


See too: Venice vs Triennial, Andrew Norman Wilson at Futura, Rachel Rose at High Art, Ed Atkins at Serpentine, Steve Reinke at Isabella Bortolozzi, Lynn Hershman Leeson at Vilma Gold, Jordan Wolfson at David Zwirner, Shana Moulton at Kunsthaus Glarus,

Jacob Kassay at von ammon co

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Technologic performance, installation awkwardness, actual dance etc., it's an increasing strategy to imbue art commodities with some sort of gesticulated spell called aura, symbolical capital, etc. "An action to the conjure the documentation." Which then the documentation won't document too closely.
Now if these paintings come sold with the flickering light and are only art designated "artworks" when installed with such, can't be brought from under them at the end of the exhibition, then color us wrong and this is funny. But doubtful, the installation has becomes the means of lifestyle branding, advertising.


See too: “Seven Reeds” at Overduin & Co., Quarterly: Ei Arakawa