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Rarely blatant horror, the genre relegated to SFX and haunted basements. Thek's meat, or Bellmer's arrangements, Nauman, McCarthy, even Bosch or all those paintings of saints' martyrdoms, aren't as expressly, grotesquely, violently, there. Texas Chainsaw Massacre frowny face. But artists love violence, what painter hasn't cleaved a face with brushstroke. It's there, implicit in so much art, proving the bloodlust buried. But theatricality is coming back, Max Hooper Schneider or Ajay Kurian, so violence admitted maybe with it too, our hematophagic libidos.
Violence: Nicola Tyson at Friedrich Petzel, Michaël Borremans at Dallas Museum of Art, Jordan Wolfson at David Zwirner, Berlinde de Bruyckere at Hauser & Wirth, Andro Wekua at Sprüth Magers, Miriam Cahn at Meyer Riegger, Robert Longo at Metro Pictures, Tomoo Gokita at Taka Ishii, Michael E. Smith at Michael Benevento, Sam Durant at Praz-Delavallade & Vedovi, Erwin Wurm at Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Ajay Kurian at White Flag Projects