Of all the left hand early-to-mid-career turns made, Sugimoto’s left turns 360 degree shitty whipping donuts around as though he could walk away from it all. Trading in all that delectably precious gelatinous silver for brown burlap what? compared to Pace’s tesla coil science-fair (wasn’t even really that big of a tesla coil) got nothing on this. Here an artist who could have lived off his silver screens forever, predicated on its embalm’s impressiveness. but instead apocalyptic mis-en-scene with Anselm Kiefer levels of extentialist post-theshit-nostalgia. Look in this window to see a fake naked lady on a real silk couch. These hay-ride theatrics becoming ubiquitous. The return to theater. Destruction fetishism. Radioactive history. But artistic desire to look at the present with the lens of the post, it ends up coming across as solipsistic, needy. If we’re going to continue with these haunted hay-rides we could at least remember Sturtevant actually made an actual House-of-Horrors amusement ride.
