“Let me ask, are you a thick one?”
All submissions are welcome here. Published on Tuesday mornings, click here to subscribe!
💦 darling sweeties
💦 scholastic simulacra
💦 vanity projects to make big data look cool and cute
Events
Not huge amounts going on this week but A+ shows across the spectrum. The Uniqlo Heattech thermals are taking a break this week, and we’ll be sashaying from Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley’s presumably wild show at Studio Voltaire to anarcho/ecofeminist Monica Sjöö’s survey at Alison Jacques, all the way to spittle-fave Ruoru Mou’s show at San Mei which explores the dark side of the ‘Made in Italy’ label on luxury goods… see you on the other side x
🧊 30 Jan | 6-8 pm | Danielle Brathwaite-Shirley: The Rebirthing Room, Studio Voltaire [Clapham Common]
🧊 30 Jan | 6-8 pm | Uman: Darling Sweetie, Sweetie Darling, Hauser & Wirth [Oxford Circus]
🧊 30 Jan | 6-8 pm | Monica Sjöö, Alison Jacques [Green Park]
🧊 1 Feb | 6-8 pm | Ruoru Mou: Leftover Linings, San Mei Gallery (Opening performance by Tom Halstead and Valentina Magalleti) [Loughborough Junction]
🧊 1 Feb | 6-9pm | Patrick Goddard: Home Invasion, Seventeen [Haggerston]
🧊 1 Feb | 6-8pm | Yu Ji: Protrude, Sadie Coles HQ, Bury St [Green Park]
🧊 4 Feb | 12pm - 12am | Theo Ellison: Standard, Spryte [online screening]
Exhibition of the Week
Refik Anadol: Living Paintings: Nature at Kunsthal Rotterdam. Through April 1. Info here.
Last week saw us hopping on a Eurostar to inevitably rainy Rotterdam. As the weather declined, we holed up in the city’s Kunsthal to see what was on offer. Refik Anadol’s Living Paintings: Nature was showing across the ground floor. His first exhibition in the Netherlands, the show consists of a body of triptychs that visually represent data corresponding to the weather systems and national parks of California.
And oh my god it was so bad. Big-tech art. Supposedly about the climate crisis and future potentials of tech-human development but - really - giving vanity project designed to make big data look cool and cute. One triptych was an ‘AI painting’ trained on like 500k ‘publicly available images’ of preserved land (presumably scraped from insta) which were used to create ‘model’ images of Californian National Parks… technologically pretty dumb as we understand it, and offering *zero* critical interpretations of nature, data or national heritage. What is it then? You might ask. It’s art for hedge fund managers who think that carbon offsetting will solve the climate crisis. Sorry Refik! We said it.
By being opaque about what data he takes from where and how he uses it, Anadol’s abstract works recreate the power imbalance between us and big tech companies. A large screen offers sci-fi film-like graphics, with some brief explanation about how the works were made. But after staring at the screen for five minutes I’m no closer to understanding why or how he actually made the works. Vague statements filled with techy, science-y buzzwords flash across the screen, but don’t seem to really mean anything.
The central work in the exhibition is an ‘infinity room,’ a dark box with three sides covered in screens showing undulating shapes, with another three covered in mirrors. I can’t help but wonder if the purpose of the mirrored wall (the third side, after the floor and ceiling) is simply to allow visitors to more conveniently take selfies of their visit. Interestingly this particular work had no wall label. No title, no year, no medium. No information about it at all. Presumably, they thought visitors would be so awe-inspired by the kaleidoscopic display they wouldn’t bother to check.
Critics of the artworld’s lame attempts to address the climate crisis often quote the phrase ‘no art on a dead planet’. But if, as the press release would suggest, Anadol’s work is the future of art, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing…
For those not able to make it to Rotterdam, Andaol has an exhibition opening at Serpentine North, London on February 16th.
Hot Links
🍼 “suckling on the (unrecyclable, single-use) plastic teat” - The government’s decision yesterday to ban single-use vapes reminded us of Imogen West Knight’s article from last year on just how bloody GOOD they are but also how very BAD they are too. Over the last few years they have been a staple of pres, parties and post-opening pub-seshes, and, while the health and environmental reasons for banning them are pretty clear, we can’t help but reminisce about all the good times. RIP, Mary, gone but not lost <3
📚 “Not to be that bitch, but I wrote enough books for two academic careers.” - McKenzie Wark talks us through her new book, Love and Money, Sex and Death, and the importance of autofiction in a capitalist world. A great article in itself, it also doubles up as a pretty robust reading list xxx
💾 “empty junk food packaging and Y2K relics such as Nintendo Gamecubes and digi-cams” - A new book by merritt k looks back on the Local Area Network (LAN) parties of the 90s and early 2000s. A rich archive of nerdy nostalgia, the book highlights the collaborative, optimistic spirit of web1. But, if nothing else, it will make you crave a big cold can of monster.
🦄 Does surrealism merely offer escapist nostalgia? - OG Financial Times art writer Jackie Wullschläger examines why surrealism - championing the irrational, the subconscious, dream states (“pure psychic automatism”) to revolutionise the mind - remains so abundant. ‘Is surrealism so popular today because we are all capitalist Surrealists now, hooked on endless streams of disconnected pictures?’ she asks… #gulp
Add-to-cart
Since reading Ben Schwarz’s Unlicenced: Bootlegging as Creative Practice, we were excited to see Dan Colen take on the hacker spirit with the release of sustainable merch to help fund his sustainable farm. A side hustle for a side hustle, if you will. The collection, which takes text and imagery from the trucking and construction industries, launched last week along with a v sexy shoot and interview in Interview. We’re drooling over these thick one jeans (with a jacket to match, too!). And all the materials are recycled or repurposed, to boot! We can’t help butthink this would make the most perfect uniform for Querelle if he was a trucker rather than a sailor xx
Full collection available here, ranging from $30-1,360
Parting Shot
Were spittle the only front desk girlies not in Bruton, Somerset this wknd for the opening of Present Tense, Hauser & Wirth Somerset’s survey of UK-based artists? Insta stories were brimming with well-heeled down-from-towners giddily trotting around the renovated farm where Franz West sculptures and Piet Oudolf-designed gardens collide.
Including works by Antonia Showering, Victoria Cantons, George Rouy, Ella Walker, Joseph Yaeger, the exhibition seems like it centred on pretty much all the painters coming to commercial/Instagram prominence from the lockdown period to the present. Or in Hauser’s vague words: “confront notions of identity, consciousness, humanity and representation… to the cultural climate of the UK right now.” Beyond this laboured curatorial concept, spittle can’t hazard any guesses as to why the Blue-Chip gallery might want to bring so many young hot and in-demand painters together? Any ideas?
In lieu of any installation shot spoilers, we leave you with friend of the ‘sletter Ana Viktoria Dzinic’s documentation of her experience at Casa Wirth…
xoxoxo