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The normally groan inducing abuse of green screen is perfect here not for its potentializing the anyspacewhateverism of our onsetting digital tyranny but for finalizing the nail in the coffin of its utter banality mirroring the cheap surrounds of the congenitally bland office. You really could be anywhere inside there. Rooms so boring they are physically upsetting. People spend their lives in rooms like these. Landlords piecemeal warehouses into art studios that look like this, the furthest thing from freedom, and fire hazards. There's no way this show is up to building codes. Artists die in spaces like these, surely creating a lot of last moments' regret among the creative class. The surveillance only emphasizing the lost track of your body like phantom limbs. Keil's knack for pinpointing and amplifying the dreck comprising our doldrums would seem cruel if masochism hadn't become so fun as means of at least owning it: the if-I-am-going-to-feel-depression-I-may-as-well-inflict-it-upon-myself feeling of control. So if you're looking for a hit of coal black drudgery Keil is it. Almost baroquely morose.
Here's hoping some of those hollow core doors get sold as paintings, I would like one, mail one to me.
See too: Julia Scher at DREI, Morag Keil at Jenny’s, Morag Keil at Real Fine Arts, CAWD on Desensitization, Merlin Carpenter at Overduin & Co., Georgie Nettell at Lars Friedrich, Gili Tal at Jenny’s, Georgie Nettell at Reena Spaulings
