Saturday, August 18, 2018

3 Shows, Julia Scher at DREI, Lin May Saeed at Studio Voltaire, Fernando Palma Rodriguez at House of Gaga


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The security camera, early exemplar of the our proprioception lost to digital realms as your body could be distended in mirrors sent through ethers appearing before you, behind you, and Magritte's Not to be Reproduced no longer surreal but our reality, walking into department stores. On facebook you reach out to poke, instagram click to like, your body a ghost appearing in other's mirrors. You appear everywhere. Like deafferented monkeys in lab experiments we lose control of limbs at the researcher doing studies on our psyche attempting to maximize engagement, a word which now means clicks, their hands in our gloves. Animals living with open brains.

Animals in environments degraded by plastics, EPS, Styrofoam. We with some idea rolling around in our heads about how long these foams last, largely abstract, largely uncertain, a million or a mere ten thousand, years, the foam will persist longer than paintings. In the presence of light it very quickly experiences photodegradation breaking down into a powdery substance that will chemically persist in the lungs and bloodstream of animals moving up the food chain. A fragile body, naive, that requires our protection. Sculptures which if improperly cared for become time bombs of their environmental toxicity, careful with them, leaching chemical into the fish they depict carefully, a preciousness we must protect.

The deranged mechanicals. Robots acting stupidly, uncaringly. A world we've designed as such. See the video here. Motors are dangerous, they are inhuman, lose track of where your body is, get your hand caught, its inability to discern the softness of flesh air you experience a rapid what is called degloving.