Jacqueline Kiyomi Gork at Empty Gallery

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Art is the airline hanger where we assess the fallen debris of culture - let the objects, set to dance by artists, "speak." We initiates perform the ancient practice of meaning. Divine from cultural tea leaves a wall text, a press release, a content. The use-value of art, meaning, the world is not arbitrary, there are things in the dark trees, we cannot see them but assume them, look until your eyes produce them.

See too: Airline Wreckage

Richard Hawkins at Empty Gallery

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Philosophy buggered its forebears, and Hawkins's art history is a defiled corpse. A past that rots lovely, flesh as sustenance for fish or eyes. The way Hawkins looks at an eternally young Matt Dillon is the way serial killers shampoo their dead victim's hair. Alive to the bearer in its mausoleum, art. Preservation and worm mulch, and maybe no difference between the two for your bride. I wish Hawkins would release books of the collages, the forensic files of his/our art corpse love. Hawkins, let us write the essay.

Tishan Hsu at Empty Gallery

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Videodrome's image of the man sinking into a television screen, along with its tagline "Long live the new flesh," were two perfect nuggets all but eclipsing the film itself - which I can barely remember. But recall the movie magic: image, pure ethereal surface, desire, that could was given reality, body, skin. The practical SFX perfected the transubstantiation. It tapped some unconscious cultural anxiety to give body to what was only presented to us abstractly, remotely, a televisual war that didn't actually take place. It's an old horror story- our dreams, manifested, bring actual nightmares. This is what we deep down know, why it's such successful plot trope, our desires are craven, you manifest the flesh on the screen and in reality you receive a really annoying supermodel.