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Monday, November 26, 2018
Henrik Olesen at Schinkel Pavilion
(link)
Dirt collects where there are no eyes, this is surely a saying somewhere. Culture has its own rheum. It accumulates in street corners, behind hedges, in dark clubs. Opened to the light society finds these areas repulsive, "Social phobias that reinforce the pathologies of abnormality." And so control must expose everything to light. Social reproduction is premised on this exposure, the normative society you are judged against, must assimilate to. For instance Chickens peck any limping young to death by using words like fag or sodomy laws. This way the cast-off internalizes the panopticon as an ever carried guilt. So the newspapers in alleys will know they are out of place. We prefer clean streets, our families nuclear. The overt reference to Thek here fits as an artist frustrated with minimalist cleanliness, the art of power desiring the removal of fingerprints, subjectivity and labor for grand notions of autonomy that only function when you can function in the light. Which now of course Olesen standing occupying the garde position of Art's Schinkel panopticon.
See too: Melvin Edwards at Daniel Buchholz, Henrik Olesen at Cabinet, Henrik Olesen at Reena Spaulings, Gerry Bibby, Henrik Olesen at Sismógrafo