After I had wandered through NEXT, I realized certain images/themes seemed prominent. Looking through my notes, I must have felt ambivalent about most of the work that fell into these themes since I have little additional information. But I think it is worthwhile at least to note these streams of thought.
1) Skulls/Skeletal Figurations: If you’re not sure a work is working, just throw a skull in the corner. It’ll be fine. Or maybe just cut the canvas and stick a bone through it. I wonder if this is a reaction to Hirst’s “For the Love of God” or perhaps the general mortal vibe cast by skeletons on hip hoodies and T-shirts from Urban Outfitters and Threadless. (I actually own one of those shirts.)
2) Animal Hybrids/ Animals Not Behaving Normally: Depictions of birds, rabbits and sharks seem to be well represented. Shark girls, teddy bear battles, rabbits that have been brutalized or are about to brutalize come readily to mind. Kimberley Hart at Mixed Greens had the most interesting rabbit, but I’ll talk about that in another post.
3) Changing Text: Installations that have text that rewrites itself are strewn throughout the space from the student to the professional precincts. These range from small salvaged LED screens to intricate vacuum molded sculptures that serve as screens for animation of gears and text.
4) Americana: Maybe because we are in the Land of Lincoln, maybe because our national hopes and frustrations feel so palpable, the Great Debater has a presence here. But the Americana is not limited to this figure, flags, queer revisions of ethnographic images of Indians and other odd interpretations of the American past are present.
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