“In the sky’s a waning gibbous, size of a fist and the golden-orange of a Bitcoin logo”
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This Week
💦 tits in space
💦 Zuckerberg’s ‘neo-feudal’ metaverse
💦 the sheriff of nottingham: 1 / robin hood fake collectors: 0
Events: 18 - 24 Jan
Less is more this week, with a short but sweet itinerary. Maybe see you at these openings, or maybe we’ll catch them in our own time, who knows! Spoiler alert, we will be attending Testament at Goldsmiths on Friday, which has a participating artist list that is the stuff of dreams.
🧊 19 January | 6 - 8pm | Wang Gongxin: In-Between, White Cube Mason’s Yard [Green Park]
🧊 20 January | 5 - 8pm | Mary Ramsden: The bag of stars, Pilar Corrias Fitzrovia [Oxford Circus]
🧊 20 January | 5 - 9pm | Henry Mills: Tonic, Ridley Road Project Space [Dalston Kingsland]
🧊 21 January | From 6:30pm | Testament, Goldsmiths CCA [New Cross Gate]
Exhibitions of the Week
Stephen Polatch: Clyde at Soft Opening
Stephen Polatch’s paintings, muted in colour at first glance, throb with a vibrancy on closer inspection. The dappled paint, exposing glimpses of lurid underpainting below, gives the works an animated, lively quality. The scenes too seem muted and ordinary at first glance - depicted are walks along the banks of the river, a city at leisure. Yet, leaning in closer, one notices surreal aspects to the work, a marriage of fact and fiction reminiscent of the magical realism tradition.
Exhibition runs through 19th February. Information here.
Kat Lyons: Early Paradise at Pilar Corrias, Savile Row
Taking inspiration from time spent living on a livestock farm which used regenerative farming practices, Kat Lyons investigates the relationship between humans, animals, and their shared environments. Critical of our tendency to anthropomorphise other beings, which only reinforces ideas of human exceptionalism, Lyons encourages the viewer to attempt to dismantle the culturally-engrained separations between ourselves and the natural world.
Exhibition runs until 22 January. Information here.
Hot Links
🐇 Žižek reviews the new Matrix film - Global treasure Slavoj Žižek pops up in The Spectator to review the completely unnecessary fourth installment in the Matrix series, comparing taking the blue pill to Zuckerberg’s ‘neo-feudal’ metaverse and concluding that ‘the film is ultimately not worth seeing – which is why I also wrote this review without seeing it’.
😼 Catfishing collectors!! - Italian newspapers expose a group of (fake) collectors with influential IG accounts, who were trying to influence existing collectors into buying young (pretty unknown) artists, by falsely claiming their works belonged to important (fake) collections!! Steal from the rich… Give to the poor.
💻 Living among the cryptopunks / in Lisbon where the sea air is clear - spittle is seriously swooning over the debut guest edit of this new column from Spike Art Mag, which is subtitled ‘A pseudonymous crypto correspondant’s party diary from a city Airbnb’d to the hilt for a weeklong Ethereum extragavanza.’ Queue sunset descriptions which reference the Bitcoin logo.
👔 Apocalypse Now: The Boardroomification of Celebrity - ‘Since the Great Resignation triggered a vast labour shortage and sent us hurtling towards an economic collapse, many brand owners have had to resort to the unthinkable, and recruit from a pool filled with those most in need of employment: celebrities’.
♻️ Flipping hell!! US lawsuit exposes the inner-inner workings of the art market - In news which is at once shocking and entirely predictable, details of a US case which have been made public suggest that a top-level collector with his own private museum has been selling in-demand works for a profit, to a collector with the money but without the clout.
🧑🎓 Academic text mentions art instagram @whos____who (spittle likely to be next) - Mostafa Heddaya delves into our relentless, problematic and frankly unimaginative need to explain by comparison for Artforum and it is the first time we’ve ever seen the art comparison @whos____who account mentioned in an academic text!
Add-to-Cart
Did you, like us, miss Sarah Lucas’ stand-out show at The Perimeter and do you, like us, deeply regret it? To make up for it, Lucas’ iconic ‘Tits in Space’ wallpaper is back at Sadie Coles HQ’s online shop. The must-have interior design piece features the YBA staple’s famous tit shaped cigarette sculptures floating alluringly on a plain background (the black one is our fave, pink and gray also available). It is not totally unaffordable at £400 per roll… just kidding. Sadie Coles Sarah Lucas Wallpaper
Parting Shot
A bad week for art-meme account Jerry Gogosian, who seems to have been the latest victim of instagram’s algorithm, and has been shadow banned. Normally reserved for genuinely subversive, edgy or controversial subject-matter, Meta seem to be widening their net. Perhaps one too many completely non-art-related ‘do yoga with me’ live streams, Jerry? If Gogosian has gone down, surely all of us (including your nan) are now at risk?!
Love,
London’s beating ‘art <3 <3 <3 <3