Monday, August 4, 2014

Claus Rasmussen at Tanya Leighton 

Claus Rasmussen at Tanya Leighton

 Despite all the cold clarity and directness the show retains that contemporary trope of ironic mystery - the same feeling tuned to by so many of the neo-materialist mystics - that attempted uncanny “where did this come from” irrationality - a sort of marxist surrealism of so much Städelschule. Rasmussen extends this Mysteriosity, adopting a Christopher Williams type refinement: the PR and audio piece positing a lifeless explanation for the photos. Yet still coldness remains in the disjunct of logic, as in science: that the how could somehow answer for the why. While the more straightforwardly Marxist Williams always posits, at least the feeling of, answers in the veiled nebulism (and generally expounded to great rhetorical fireworks in the texts); Rasmussen here simply dashes hope like a novel cut in half. Rasmussen’s feelings no less palpable, yet it feels synthetic, forced, possibly justifiable, the feeling of attempting to discern any lifelike motives in the pin-striped businessman’s dreams.