Monday, June 26, 2017

Mark Prent at Mitchell Algus


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Rarely blatant horror, the genre relegated to SFX and haunted basements. Thek's meat, or Bellmer's arrangements, Nauman, McCarthy, even Bosch or all those paintings of saints' martyrdoms, aren't as expressly, grotesquely, violently, there. Texas Chainsaw Massacre frowny face. But artists love violence, what painter hasn't cleaved a face with brushstroke. It's there, implicit in so much art, proving the bloodlust buried. But theatricality is coming back, Max Hooper Schneider or Ajay Kurian, so violence admitted maybe with it too, our hematophagic libidos.



Violence: Nicola Tyson at Friedrich PetzelMichaël Borremans at Dallas Museum of ArtJordan Wolfson at David ZwirnerBerlinde de Bruyckere at Hauser & WirthAndro Wekua at Sprüth MagersMiriam Cahn at Meyer RieggerRobert Longo at Metro PicturesTomoo Gokita at Taka IshiiMichael E. Smith at Michael BeneventoSam Durant at Praz-Delavallade & VedoviErwin Wurm at Kunstmuseum WolfsburgAjay Kurian at White Flag Projects