While it was A LOT to take in, and the crowds did not help my ability to concentrate or sit and watch video, there were many works that stood out for me throughout the evening. A repeat visit is on the menu...
Taxidermied creatures, such as the fox and the bird seen above, were laid to rest in several corners around the gallery. The work of Abbas Akhavan chose not to represent these dead animals in their traditional and vivid trophy stance, but as they are: stripped of their life and "doubly-dead."
The Steubenville, Ohio, High School rape case that made my blood boil. The 2012 case that converged many skin crawling tropes of modernity: victim blaming, slut shaming, social media trolling, rape culture, bias in the media, and on and on... Andrea Bowers' work (above) featured the exchanged text messages between the (Anonymous dubbed) "Rape Crew", providing a sobering moment in the exhibit.
Other highlights:
Details from Nicolas Grenier's Promised Land Template (2014)
.
the painstaking economics of Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens
.
Eternity, the photo-op inducing work of Nicolas Baier
.
Finally, Suzanne Treister's insane mind-boggling work Hexen 2.0 (2009-2011) composed of multiple works throughout the gallery, but what did it for me was Treister's re-working of the 78 cards of a Tarot deck. I will quote the gallery text here:
"Since at least the second half of the twentieth century, the West has witnessed power and agency slip away from tangible, accountable structures of governance towards intangible, quasi-mystical forces whose goals and interests reply on programmatic techno-utilitarianism."
I had the pleasure of babbling like a child to try to convey to Treister why her work resonated so much with me. She listened politely as I gesticulated while saying: "meticulous! Medium! Message!"
It was all too much!
Art overload!
But there's so much more:
-an artist talk with Shirin Neshat
-an artist talk with Ibghy and Lemmens
-and mysterious workshops!
