Lina Viste Grønli at Christian Andersen

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Attempting to short circuit the conduit/loop by placing tongue already in objects. The words inside my head are no longer mine. Someone sitting on your shoulder, expecting you. Common to Lina Viste Grønl.

Tom Humphreys at Christian Andersen

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While Hupmphrey's gang has gone onto bigger better things, Humphreys doubled down on the stupid. Paintings like found in the bins of art school. The revulsion we feel at "bad painting" becomes proof of at least some internal power of painting. The Kippenberger game of self-infliction without the personality panache to recoup it, instead, again, paintings that don't relieve their stupid, but rub their face in it, even yours. This could be a Vittorio Brodmann or Nolan Simon situation, in which the slacker ruse eventually decurtains its prowess, reveal eyerolling deft brushwork, but Humphreys seems like someone who might commit to mud.

Till Megerle at Christian Andersen

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Megerle's earlier drawings with all their provisionality, like comic book schematics for inkblot architecture, retain some of that previous ambiguity here: the amorphous bulbs of lumpen potato people, forms of soft confusion, the graphic line replaced here with corpulence, a dumbness that flatters them, doubt as to what is taking place in them, uncertainty opens as possibility: art's usual interest in opacity replaced with a direct mystery.


See too: Mathew Cerletty at Office Baroque,

“Sirens” at Christian Andersen

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Wolfson made clear that Irony could be weaponized. And here a CSI spoof becomes Sirens' lure, showcasing the world as a way-more-than-directionless cast of characters flailing at even the start of existential questions, obliviousness becoming a goofball existentialism, Caddyshack meets Nausea, and the wait for Godot replaced by a boneheaded stonerism, the absurdity cranked to 11 on a world that reflects not bleakness, but the barren stupidity of Hollywood cliche. When a character - in a spark of clarity - decides to de-mire themselves from the bog of their helplessness, "change the world," the plan ultimately involves selling mermaid meat to the rich. Hopes dashed, and meaning becomes a jumbled mess that ultimately catalyses the apathy it depicts, and the plot is obviously lost to a the gaseous settling of I'm-not-even-able-to-mean into the cracks of everything, interspersed with a few solid jokes. It's just a prank, Bro, and non-sequitur the major currency of comedy today.
As David Robbins becomes evermore relevant, the problem of artists moving closer to mainstream forms is that one enters into direct competition with people who are professionals at it. And this risk of wild amateurism in comparison makes risk averse artist shy. Artists obviously do something different. The metaphysical pondering of the mermaid is probably the highlight of the short, and the jokiest question becomes the most pertinent for art, "How can you move into the future riding a dinosaur?"