Robert Grosvenor at The Renaissance Society

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Amongst the sterility of minimalist forms Grosvenor's like the subtle bulge in the zubaz of propriety it reminds us of. Grosnevor's doesn't feel naturalized, but constructed, affected, conjuring the sweat of effort and work that minimalism tried to avoid through industrial process and design. Grosvenor's minimalism reminds us of work and sweat and bodies, of the designer, the sun baked engineer. Grosvenor's minimalism reconsiders the earthliness that minimalism tried to disavow, work.

Robert Grosvenor at Karma

Violet Dennison at Jan Kaps

Violet Dennison at Jan Kaps

Moments become quasisubjects, they take on their own personalities, objects become subjects we feel willing to converse with, perhaps a strange effect of art, our willingness to talk with objects.

Sadie Benning at Susanne Vielmetter

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Despite Cartoon's hard edges their bodies are taffy, manipulable to an extreme. Abstract a human you get gore, abstract a cartoon you get comedy. What this transition means, real to cartoon, and our want for it remains to be seen.

Dylan Spaysky at Good Weather

Dylan Spaysky at Good Weather

Say what you will of their formal concerns, smuggling the objects into their afterlife - museum heaven, landfill hell - seems the main goal of it. But whereas the drug lord cares not the for virgin Marys he casts his product into, Spaysky desires an object whole, or slightly altered. You shape an object into what will pass inspection of the tightly-controlled sectors's better opportunity, disguise your wares to get there.


See too: Dylan Spaysky at Clifton Benevento

Past: Dylan Spaysky at Clifton Benevento


"For Bennett's hoarder the world is a little like Toy Story 3, in which the cheap and mass produced must be saved from the incinerator, kept indefinitely and experienced with connection... trash,  like the drug smuggler casting his contraband in the shape of Jesus and painted to escape the prying eyes of men seeking to ruin them..."

Raimer Jochims at Jacky Strenz

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The sign/icon that isn't there, and the emptiness stemming from. Shapes generally denotes an object that should be telling us something, instead a vacancy.



Raimer Jochims at Jacky Strenz

Nancy Lupo at Kristina Kite & Yuji Agematsu at Miguel Abreu

(Nancy Lupo at Kristina Kite, Yuji Agematsu at Miguel Abreu)

"Our growing attraction to garbage makes a psychologic sense as we become hostages to the trauma of dealing with it, the deranged images of garbage spewing, animals asphyxiated, learning of its intravenous networks sprawling across unstoppable leaky pipes, garbage moved though our landscape sprawling veins..."

Continuing our interest in making Stuff as a technical word. Stuff is the eye goo of objects. Like eye goo, stuff's service is its waste, a continual sloughing, so we can remain fresh, clean. Stuff accumulates, piles, is shed. Stuff is quasi things, is transient, transactional. A disposable fork is, like, quintessential stuff. Stuff depletes, frequently, though not always, disposable. Stuff is like object-food, a storage of energy for consumption, use. Stuff differentiates itself from things because everyone is putting energy toward it not being a thing: Companies/consumers press for stuff's cheapness, the user wants it only for what it can do, then to get rid it of it as soon as possible after, a pressure for stuff to be biodegradable. Stuff's thingness is a problem.

If there is something abject, itchy, about the Lupo's installation it is because stuff is being forced to become thing, stitched like rafts, like the The Great Garbage Patch, which too is stuff becoming thing, object, and anxious.
If Agemtasu's trash is comforting, lovable, it is because the stuff has been already digested to waste, paradoxically less anxious than stuff because it doesn't have the anxiety of stuff's thingness, just waste, and repackaged in the safety of cellophane to return it once again to product, we find comfort in products.



See too: “May the Bridges I Burn Light the Way” at STANDARD (OSLO), Nancy Lupo at Swiss Institute, Nancy Lupo at 1857, Yuji Agematsu at Real Fine Arts,  Yuji Agematsu at Artspeak