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Tuesday, July 18, 2023

Jacqueline Humphries at Modern Art


(link)

The long and short of it is, Humphries always remained ahead of the zombies by making the embalming process more cartoonish, more itself, and gave us what we always really wanted: new paint, a shinier paint, a wanton paint. (The zombie formalist only had handwringing conceptual excuses for old paint, their endless search for "brains" to make 2nd generation Abex somehow refreshed with "process" but generating old looks.) Humphries looked garishly more - without excuse - bested abex by being even more airheaded than it - no search for brains, just new paint big. Humphries processes always felt mere wreaths to the dingdong, which they were, exceptionally beside the point. (That was the point, you didn't need them.) But lo this is the first exhibition where the first thing you see, a quotation, not delicious paint, a conceptual process foreground itself, which is like reading IKEA instructions for the sex promised.