“the gimmick’s diamond-cut, cubic-zirconia surface”
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This week:
💦 candy, cigarettes, kratom, and glass pipes
💦 pressure-cooked vegetables, marrow, and a beef jus
💦 so much fire
Events
Private views are BACK. spittle has turned a new leaf in our pink 2023 alligator skin Smythson diaries and will be sashaying around London doing the rounds this week. We’re most excited to see what current RA student and purveyor of alien-toned cowboys – + friend of the ‘sletter – Max Boyla has been up to in his solo show with Sim Smith xo
🧊10 January | 6–8pm | Eccentric Spaces, The Artist Room [Piccadilly Circus]
🧊10 January | 6.30–7.45pm | Uncommon Observations: Photography, Image-making, and the Black Diaspora, Art on the Underground free course led by Nydia Swaby. Duration: 4 weeks (every Tuesday until 31 January 2023) [.Online] | Register here.
🧊11 January | 6–8pm | Adam Farah-Saad: B-SIDES (THE RE-UP / PSYCHOCRUISING FAITHFUL MIX, Public Gallery [Aldgate/Liverpool Street]
🧊14 January | 3–5pm | Max Boyla: Add More Fuel To Your Life, Sim Smith [Camberwell]
🧊14 January | 10am–4pm | FLATNESS, no cash needed swap shop and screening by Tomás Fernandez Vértiz as part of their residency at FormaHQ, [Peveril Gardens, near Elephant & Castle]
Hot links
🩸 “2022… the year when monetization became an endemic blood-borne parasite” - spittle fave Dommenick Ammirati deep dives into Jamian Juliano Villani’s gallery O’Flaherty’s; exploring the continuing allure of artist-led galleries. Re. Jamian’s venture he asks Is it a business or is it a joke? a form of institutional critique? ‘The only people O’Flaherty’s is crucifying are themselves, nailing themselves to the holy Volkswagen of the arbitrary ascription of value,’ he skewers.
🍔 “there’s so much fire” - young writer-to-watch Sam Moore has started a new substack titled A Secret Third Thing. His first essay is about fictional kitchens and the act of self-destruction. Comparing themes in The Menu and The Boar, Sam acutely asks what ‘it means to be broken down and remade?’
🔚 “I genuinely don’t know where my doomscrolling ends and where I begin.” - ‘Endings may offer the promise of salvation, redemption. Even liberty. But they are also exhausting,’ says theorist Shumon Basar in his essay The Dawn of Endcore for Flash Art. From screenshot trends, [insert x here]-cores, to hot peace and the Coronacene, Basar explores our contemporary obsession with the end by way of Mark Fisher, Slavoj Žižek and Bella Hadid.
⛺ “Shittiness is a big tent — and the tent is falling apart” - n+1 mag asks ‘why is everything so ugly’ in their Winter Issue. ‘Gray suffuses life beyond architecture: television, corporate logos, product packaging, clothes for babies, direct-to-consumer toothbrushes. What incentives — material, libidinal, or otherwise — could possibly account for all this gray…?’ readers, it’s YOUR arty job to make things more beautiful xoxoxo
🎀 “Barbie’s late-70s Dreamhouse is a timely take on Post-modernism, environmentalism, and the growing suburbanization of America” -If most things are ugly, Barbie’s Dreamhouses certainly are not – suggest by Felix Burrichter and Whitney Mallett in a homage to Barbie’s mid-century plastic fantastic funhouses that ripped off furniture designs by the likes of Verner Panton, Michel Ducaroy and Marcel Breuer. In advance of the impending Margot Robbie-induced Barbiecore trend, we suggest investing in one now. As Elvia Wilk notes, it’s hard to make a dollhouse that’s not creepy - congrats, Barbie xoxo
Exhibition Collaboration of the week
We LOVE to see artists collaborating with luxury brands, not least because the post-2007 art-as-investment cycle has led to some interesting comparables between the two industries.
After soft-launching in every it-girl’s PR-ed insta feed over the holidays, Kusama’s second collaboration with Louis Vuitton dropped this week – to mixed reception. The collection is expansive; split across four themes inspired by her oeuvre – Painted Dots, Infinity Dots, Metal Dots and Psychedelic Flowers – with clothing, scarves and footwear on the menu. A dizzying array of over 100 items had this eager spittle contributor sifting through perfume travel cases and bikinis to get to the good stuff.
If we’ve learnt anything from watching reruns of Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares it’s that a long menu leads to sloppy execution. While the Speedys and Pochettes adorned with Kusama’s idiosyncratic dots are undeniably iconic, we can’t say the same for the Archlight trainers (above, £975). While this collab isn’t as consistent as her (still highly sought-after) original under Marc Jacobs’ tenure, there are some gems in there that will be as good an investment as that still-wet painting you bought straight from the studio. Another covetable investment to add to the ‘art fair handbag’ bingo card!
Unfortunately, the public has not been entirely kind, so gallerist at Victoria Miro and Kusama’s liaison Glenn Scott-Wright took to Instagram to sing her praises, pointing out that “Kusama retains full control of her artistic image and all aspects of this collaboration.” Commenters on Louis Vuitton’s Instagram were less sure, frequently confusing the collection for a collaboration with Google.
Causing as much of a stir as the bags themselves was the super uncanny robo-Kusama’s which sprung up in LV shop windows worldwide. The conceptual link to her work seems pretty tenuous, and the cost must have been astronomical, leading us to wonder, did the marketing team spend a little too long in an infinity room before coming up with this? The question at the forefront of our minds was, do these animatronic dolls have the same, eye-contact-making ability as Jordan Wolfson’s? Will the Kusama dolls act as Female Figures in their retirement? Are they about to recite lyrics a la Coloured Sculpture.
If you, or anyone you know, has locked eyes with a Kusama doll, please do let us know at spittlesubmission@gmail.com xo
Add-to-cart
Alongside CDs, Y2K digital cameras are set to be one of the biggest trends of 2023, according to The New York Times who write that ‘Young people are opting for point-and-shoots and blurry photos’ because ‘People are realizing it’s fun to have something not attached to their phone…’ We won’t be attaching this Kathy Acker Pussy CD to our phone but we will be playing it on full blast while drinking Lucky Saint and eating CBD gummies at our next dry-Jan dinner party. Available at Climax Books for £35
Parting Shot
January is seen by many as a time to make new habits, surrender to routines, and make healthy choices. In Joshua Citarella’s case, this means eating only meat for the entire month of January, along with @hoe_slut_hoe and @angel__emoji, who are eating soy-based products for the whole 31 days. Part experiment, part competition, part deconstruction of masculinity, we watch his stories, aghast.