There is too much metaphor, too much content to Shin's subjects: birth, cocks, Kanye, the X-rays of objects we don't need. And casts their lure in photographic concrete, explicit, as incredibly stupid-if-beautiful facades. Against all the assumptions of art's effusive aboutness, or meaning, (or whatever critical magic we unconsciously appreciate) Shin's turn the subject off, loaded with a content that's there but not it: entering into its game of unpacking "cocks" is the bright red gap, the herring to a photo depicting it. It's a dare, like shark-cocks, a socially constructed mirage. But you are not a detective, this is not a Clue board. This is the sort of Wolfsonian dissonance, an affective-if-meaningless thing, a vacuum we can't allow. An X-ray is no help to thought, a picture maps no meaning. Cocks are pretty. Kanye is a uniquely Baroque wall, not a window. The writer who attempts shall be eaten by dragons.
See too: Heji Shin at MEGA Foundation, Jordan Wolfson at Sadie Coles HQ, Jana Euler at Galerie Neu
