Of Milnerton and Transcendence
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
I won't lie, we are all very familiar with the style of work to be found in Wilhelm Saayman's offering at Whatiftheworld. It's as if David Shrigley grew up in Milnerton (which being a Shrigley fan and having grown up in Milnerton, I see as a compliment. But it might not be, too).It's part of a general world-wide Shriglization, with countless artists turning to the off-beat humour and casual mark-making and a childlike clumsiness as a way to add mystery and depth to rather boring ideas. It's like being anti-art but buying into the myth of the natural artist genius outsider idiot savant thing (like how Daniel Johnston became Art World Star at the Whitney Biennale a couple of years back).
Then you get Wilhelm Saayman's stuff. It doesn't fall into that trap, ma
inly because the lazy-clumsy and depressed themes have a rather particular function. It makes the political seem more creepy (as in Abu Ghraib left), or the personal more tragic (as in Au Pair right). And then sometimes it transcends it's own style by capturing something essential, a meta-likeness. The image Absent Father really stuck with me, capturing something from childhood that was really emotional. No complex joke, just boom, there.And t
hat doesn't happen often.So while there were high points and low points to the show, it at least gave me my favourite artwork of the year so far.
posted by Robert Sloon at 1:44 PM
9 Comments:
I have to disagree sloony, it’s a flaccid exhibition at best.
O yay, here come the big geniuses on the case again, the ones where you can predict a penny dropping in their brain about a hundred years in advance. Flaccid my arse.
it's easy to be flaccid when you're anon, you twat....
In a sea of mediocre photography and even more mediocre identity trawling, work like the Littlewort/Saayman combo is refreshing...
Sloon why the fuck must every 'review' you write simply be a shopping list of references as to what the show in question happened to remind you of? Buy a critical faculty you lame cunt – why not rather write reviews on the dvds you and your handjob bint watched last night – like how the new indiana jones film kind of... really... reminds you of the previous ones... Wow.. Dude you're shit. Hot. This website is, was and will continue to be the dedicated home of this cultural backwater's mediocrity. Fuck your mom. In her blogspot.
Elegant speech there, unhappy jerk.
gross. and everyone knows the blogspot doesn't exist.
oh yay it is christmas holiday time again
Haysus, anon 937, I thought I was misanthropic.
I've seen your future and it's in SSRI's...
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