back
3 comments
I think the art described in this piece is quite interesting, and the Hal Foster essay was a good read, but "x is like y ON ACID" is like a huge flashing neon sign stating 'this is a lazy piece of writing'
A lazy piece of writing. Ouch. Sorry you feel that way. Actually, it took quite a bit of work to not only notice the trend over the course of several years, but also to pull together myriad examples from multiple fields, and to provide a theoretical context. And if you'd seen the Freeman + Lowe show you'd know that there is a pronounced psychedelic aura to their work -- hence the acid reference. It's not simply a lazy metaphor.
Heh, sorry for the hyperbole. It did really annoy me though, I was enjoying the piece and that interrupted my enjoyment.

<rant>I could get on board with, say, likening the experience of Bindu Shards to being on acid. But if this has a psychedelic quality, describe it as such. Or better yet, actually describe it. ‘..on acid’ is a bad cliché[1], it doesn’t really mean anything, and it’s so overused, and so blaring, that it doesn’t [for me, anyway] fade away into the background.

[1] this springs to mind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF2fN4MmMAY </rant>

Aaaanyway, the two exhibitions you focussed on look great, I like very much obsessive, meticulously crafted assemblage (e.g. Kienholtz, Cornell, Heartfield). I worry a that I’d be a little underwhelmed by the Freeman & Lowe show. I think any artist attempting what they are has a key [probably insurmountable] problem: when mapping an expansive vision onto the world at 1:1 scale, practical considerations preclude simply expanding that outwards to any kind of size. Wexler works at a different scale, and his seems a more controlled approach to what is a similar problem. Both look fantastic though, and I love the effort that’s gone into the ethnographic side of the art. [apologies for the somewhat dickish comment]