Sunday, January 24, 2016

“Rum, sodomy, and the lash” at Eden Eden

(link)

The fritzing signals of today's art are haywire responses to the stimuli of the world's ever more erratic tone, and artists working to contain that nervous expression with their own affectual means discombobulated and freed from its semantic anchors as a coping mechanism for the staggering inanity of much of the world's power structures. Transgression of course becomes the last vestige of intimacy. Giving in to Melgaard's semantic video abuse in an otherwise thoughtful film guarantees some level of reciprocal investment from its viewers willing to allow it be inflicted upon themselves.
And now the old Sunday group-ex full circle en abyme, to haunt us. Our reflections symptomatic of the ruling parameters of its time, reflections of the entities that govern it, expressions of another hidden corporate body, expressions of the frightened and disdainful anti-socialite. The work in the exhibition feels pained in their reflection of the world. That as much as the ever disingenuous CAWD presents itself outside a system that it yearns for, CAWD getting its cake and eating it too.