On The Contemporary is currently open at Gallery Poulsen in Copenhagen, Denmark. To view the entire exhibition please click through. The show is open through December 20th, 2018. Images and video: Installation shots from Gallery Poulsen, A Privilege, 12 minutes, 2012 - 2024.
The fact that the art world relies on asymmetrical relationships isn’t a surprise, but for an aspect of culture that values autonomy and individuality above almost everything else (except maybe private property) the roles of the follower are much less discussed. The viewer, the public, the audience, the masses; these all become terms to articulate the artist’s tertiary audience (after the collector and the experts, of course) that can become entangled with problematic notions of ‘popularity’ (this is bad for the serious artist) and democratic ideas like access and equity. For The Baffler’s recent issue “Holy Orders”, I contributed an exhibition called “Oh, Cults” that looks at Institutions, Figures, and their attendant Audiences. I myself, am a guilty practitioner of shitposting and as I responded to a student’s question at a recent artist talk, “Yes, I am part troll.” The entire exhibition is spread throughout the current issue of the Baffler, which I recommend subscribing to, as well as on the website. The prints may be available soon as a limited edition suite or as individual limited edition prints through The Baffler’s store. Here, the high price (luxury) of original drawings meets the lower price (affordability) of prints where touch is conveyed through a graphite signature.
Last week Paddy Johnson and I spent the most hours either of us ever had at a single art fair (except for that time in 2006 where I interviewed people at Aqua in Miami about art fairs or the time at Parker’s Box where I took confessions for 3 days). Seriously, this was the most time I’ve ever spent looking at art in a fair context, which Yelp Elite critic and Art in America editor Brian Droitcour called “Bushwick Open Studios in Times Square.” He’s not wrong, but I don’t really read it as an insult compared to corporate chill of The Armory Show or the tasteful boredom of the Independent (which I skipped out on paying $25 bucks for this year). After 8 eight hours of art-ing at Spring Break, we discussed a few of the works that resonated with the show’s theme this year, A Stranger Comes to Town, in Part II after taking a broader look at the theme, trends, and some of the Open Studios level entries in Part I.
After After the Contemporary opens Saturday January 20th from 6 - 9 pm at Charlie James Gallery in Los Angeles. I’m pleased to debut 120 new watercolor and acrylic paintings of Artforum ads that form a timeline of the Contemporary. The new paintings expand on the fictional retrospective look at the twenty-five-year period I developed for my 2017 solo exhibition at the Aldrich. The works are available in chronological order here or as a PDF catalog you can download here
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. The exhibition also includes drawings that informed the Aldrich show from 2016 that were shown in Brussels, a print of my text-based timeline “The Contemporary in Context”, and three new sculptural Artforum watercolors on paper mounted on aluminum that were recently shown at Untitled in Miami. The press release is also available as PDF here
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