Notes from Poetics of Encryption
curated by Nadim Julien Samman
Seen at KW in Berlin 2024-03-02
I felt a bit weird about the meme publication by artists Eva and Franco Mattes in the gallery shop.
Maybe it felt too much like something I could have done, it's main effect transplanting internet memes from their intended funny to the cool sphere of interesting.
Much more enjoyable I found their hyperrealistic animal sculptures spread throughout the group show, with too many or too few body parts, irl photoshop jobs, uneasy feeling of seeing something that shouldn't be there.
I think I wrote down Citarella's name mainly because it's one Evve had mentioned in relation to do not research.
He seems to be really milking this niche ideology thing. It's entertaining, but while it gestures at something relevant in regards to the internet and the way it has affected politics (see "hyperpolitics"), sometimes I feel like it — perhaps not fetishises — but puts unwarranted spotlight on people who have no political gravity and are just very mentally ill and chronically online.
With artists it's hard to tell if hyperinterest or safe bet cash cow, maybe both. If the art is good I guess it doesn't matter.
Was lovestruck by Roger Hiorns found footage-esque video showing the burial of a jumbo jet, slowly being lowered by two cranes into a jumbo jet shaped hole. A bit sad to learn that this is essentially the practice of this artist. Don't know what I excpected.
Just something about seeing the video that gave me a feeling of being exposed so some well hidden secret. A conspiracy unravelling. Same feeling from Julian Bismarck at Berlinische Galerie
Kate Crawfords vast "mindmap" Calculating Empires took up two facing walls in a huge hangar like cellar room in the bottom of the exhibition. The very simple gesture of "here is everything, you already know of it but just look at it, all together" was kind of sublime in a really dry way.
Simon Denny's Amazon worker cage patent sculptures cut into the printed stacks of a4 paper were one of the prettiest and most sinister things i saw. Somewhere here I think it should be mentioned that the entire group show is sponsored by the Volkswagen group.
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