"charming, yet another man"
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This week
💦 Emma Watson in a luxurious bathroom
💦 filing cabinets filled with little dime-store figurines
💦 small spherical works that will, yes, go to the moon
Events
A lil post-internet moment this week with shows from Ian Cheng and DIS opening in the same week and we are HERE for it!
🧊 28 Feb | 9:30–8:30pm | Zara Toppin: Coming Out | Toppins London [Shoreditch High Street]
🧊 1 Mar | 6–9pm | Jose Sarmiento: Pigeon Chest, Stephen Ongpin Fine Art with John Swarbrooke Fine Art [Marble Arch]
🧊 1 Mar | 6–8pm | A Gauzy Flame, Herald St [Bethnal Green]
🧊 1 Mar | 6–8pm | DIS: Big Beat Disaster, Project Native Informant [Bethnal Green]
🧊 2 Mar | 6–8pm | Ian Cheng, Pilar Corrias Eastcastle Street [Oxford Street]
🧊2 Mar | 6.30pm | Presentation Club, a performance by Tosia Leniarska and Zac Klein, Emalin [Shoreditch] RSVP essential: tosia@emalin.co.uk
🧊 2 Mar | 6–9pm | Lana Locke: Relic Garden, Lungley Gallery [Oxford Circus]
🧊 3 Mar | 6–9pm | Pedalling makes crickets, group show including Elliot Jeffries, Isabella Furness, Alena Dower, Ricardo Monteiro, and Luke Parry, Safehouse, 139 Copeland Road [Peckham Rye]
Exhibition(s) of the Week
Ariel Helyes: ART FOR INVIGILATORS, until 1 March, artist’s website here
We first came across the work of Ariel Helyes last Frieze week at Sadie Coles HQ, in a group show curated by Queer Direct. Showing alongside Alejandro Villa Duran and Kim Jakobsen, in a collective titled Declined & Deceased, the work Helyes contributed was an immaculately painted handbag. The found bag – black leather, boxy, something your nanna might own – depicted a hand touching a card machine. The airbrushed work had an eerie vibe; much like the feeling at the end of the month when one’s bank balance might be too low to withdraw from such a machine. The work was a (niche) Instagram sensation, like that Issy Wood pomeranian painting, and/or Michele Lamy’s scrambled eggs. Since then, we’ve been curious about what Ariel has been up to. Their recent self-curated show at St Margaret’s Chapel in Bethnal Green invited visitors to become invigilators of their own viewing experience. Contracts were scattered all over the floor (and on huge canvases) and guests were encouraged to sign away their time - in slots ranging from a few seconds to a whole hour, with wages guaranteed at approx £11 per hour. Instantly the duration you stayed in the show became an obligation, as you de facto become a quasi-employee/performer for the artist. No scurrying away to the next show in the area if you pick a half-hour stint! For us the piece created a tension, it’s fun to be part of an artwork but awks to be taking money from the artist – after all, shouldn’t it be artists, and especially those without ‘sellable’ painting practices, who are being paid more? Researching Helyes’ work, it is obvious that investigating this tension is at the heart of their expansive, shapeshifting practice: when applying for the prestigious Rijksakademie residency, he paywalled his application, asking for the exact same amount as the application fee! #lolz. P.S. we never received the 82p for our stint… note to self: probably should have taken a pic of that contract xo
Phantom Edit, Garrett Pruter and Jacky Connolly. Brunette Coleman at Fitzrovia Chapel, until 1 March, info here.
Brunette Coleman’s inaugural exhibition Phantom Edit features films by American artists Garrett Pruter and Jacky Connolly. Staged in Fitzrovia Chapel, the dimmed lights and glistening, golden mosaiced ceiling create a hushed, monastic atmosphere. This backdrop serves the films well – both are filled with a sense of anxiety and anticipation which is at once unnerving and compelling. Connolly’s Descent into Hell (2022) uses gameplay footage from Grand Theft Auto V, stripped of its violence, the character roams a desolate, deprived Los Angeles. Part-dream part-movie, the narrative is absurd and fragmented, and the audio, voiced by Jacky, is sparse and inane. The lead character, based on Emma Watson, stands in a luxurious bathroom in front of a screen depicting a porn film starring a deep-fake Emma Watson who smiles coyly at the camera. Her double watches on, her animated expression difficult to read. Reality and fiction collapse into one another.
In Garrett Pruter’s Birds, the artist has taken Hitchcock’s seminal film of the same name, painstakingly combing through the footage frame by frame and removing all traces of the titular animals. As the drama crescendos, footage shifts and warps around the characters; the markers of what has been removed linger in each frame. This distortion, playing between presence and absence, fuels the anxiety which permeates the works. Both films explore a glitch, slippage or gap – a sense of loss and yearning, reluctant expectation and trepidation.
Hot Links
🐕 “Adrian Searle recounted receiving a ‘turd in a jiffy bag’ and some menacing phone calls” – Ostensibly a piece where Martin Herbert critiques the lack of critique in the art world, but really where he recounts critically trashing various artists. We’re here it: Paul McCarthy was, apparently, ‘depressed for a fortnight after I extended the thought “used to be good, isn’t any more” over a thousand words’.
🕷️ “this is called the Kali Yuga —the age of decadence” – 032c chats to club kids Rain Mueller and Paritos Tamang about the ‘cavities’ where they ‘create their sanctities’. We’ve been amateurishly mesmerised by Guttering since the rave started mid-lockdown, so it’s a strange feeling to see the scene – in all its earsplitting high BPM gabber, donk and chipmunk sampled beauty – officially profiled.
🥞 “During a recent auction at Phillips, some of the junior specialists were spotted taking a photograph of their matching feet” – Airmail explores the Loro Piana billionaire loafer worn by the likes of Larry Gagosian and most Basel guests on VIP day. While we’re partial to the ‘Summer Walk’ model, for this spittle contributor, the ‘Open Walk booties’ that can ‘easily slide on and off’ are some of the ugliest and creepies creps going…
🌒 “wouldn’t Michael and Bubbles tell the aliens everything they needed to know?” – We learnt that Jeff Koons’ hands are as ‘soft as a cherub’s’ in this GQ profile, which features hi-contrast images of the artist with a tan that’s more Essex than LA. Drinking instant coffee from a Yeti in the studio they explore his bonkers new ‘Moon Phases project—a sculptural installation of 125 small spherical works that will, yes, go to the moon’.
🎨 What’s worse than a David Hockney iPad drawing? A fuck-off-massive David Hockney immersive light show, that’s what! – Being very serious and cultured, we of course on a cellular level hate when it is deemed necessary to bring physical artworks to life on massive screens in 360 degrees. David Hockney has opened an immersive ‘exhibition’ in London filled with ‘beauty and awe.’ For once, we agree with JJ from the Guardian's when he says ‘Hockney has lent his fame here to a dumb contemporary fad.’
Add-to-cart
Gucci shades are so over! Margiela’s new collab with Gentle Monster will take you from the upcoming BUTT club night at the ICA straight into a sunny Sunday at the Spurstowe. Get ‘em here for a mere £355 x
Parting Shot
Parinaz Mogadassi, wife to ethereal painter Peter Doig, takes to IG to hit back at Kenny Schachter after he alleged in his catty artnet column that Doig left Michael Werner gallery to cut out the middle person (gallerist) and stack more cash. It’s a move an increasing number of artists are taking, which begs the question, are the glory days of the gallerist over? Parinaz twists the knife, explaining that a friend was recently ‘questioning the total lack of rigour and knowledge that so many "art professionals" who occupy positions of power in the commercial art world display. can you imagine these people being able to rise to comparable levels of seniority in any other industry’ !!!!!!!! We want to know, when the dust settles and all galleries have fallen, who will be bringing us our coffee?