For more than a century,
western art has been critiquing itself in earnest, from Duchamp’s ready-mades, through Greenberg’s immanent Kantian critique, through Pop’s questioning of high vs. low, through post-modernism, post-structuralism, appropriation and on and on. Critique is now a conventional, institutionalized gesture—Garbage in, Garbage out—why not just enjoy the sun and have a good time. Sunblock 50 is like German DAX 30 stock index. Meaning is always somewhere else, absent when language is being used in an attempt to communicate meaning. The desire for freedom from the idols of the past is a form of hunger, a desire that is continually unsatisfied; the desire only exists in the chase—a continual unfolding with no end.