3/29/2024 0 Comments Instal the new The Hand of Merlin![]() ![]() ![]() It's too heavy-handed a contrast-and so cynical, even Peter Sloterdijk might recoil at how nihilistically his "cynical reason" has been used. Marx and exchange value brusquely paired, the philosopher is juxtaposed with his greatest nightmare, the capitalist commodity, spelling out the ultimate inefficacy of Marx's teachings. On the cloyingly cheeky checklist-cum-pricelist, they're listed before the price for each painting, which is $40,000, set in bold. If the paintings' titles sound Marxist, it's because they are Marx's words, as quoted from his Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. They are lovely messes, and I love that about them. In "House-rent stands in inverse proportion to industrial poverty" (2015), a pouty pair of emoji-like red lips float above a clutch of bastardized Pryde hands, filled in with uneven shades of washy color. "The existence of capital is his existence, his life as it determines the tenor of his life in a manner indifferent to him"(2015) features two crudely drawn interlocked hands at its center, surrounded by black squiggly lines, with a burst of blue marks in the middle. The other layer is Carpenter's intuitive response to Pryde's image-often scrawled over or under it-which takes the form of scribbly, cartoonlike hands and washes of color. One layer apes a photograph by Carpenter's friend Josephine Pryde, which features people holding gadgets with touch-sensitive surfaces such as smartphones, tablets, and lamps. Each canvas features two layers of oil, aluminum paint, and polyurethane varnish. The ironic thing is that the paintings in Hands Against Hands are executed rather well, and are easy on the eyes to boot. The work begs to be judged by different standards: How successfully was it bullshit? Was it bullshit done well? Did Painting weep at how thoroughly its historical tropes of skill, representation, and opticality were casually dismissed, devil may care? It's very tricky, if not kind of futile, to criticize the work of Merlin Carpenter he does it for you before you've even had the chance, calling his art "crap political work." So even if it is total bullshit-like his recent show of paintings, Hands Against Hands, at Reena Spaulings Fine Art was-bullshit is entirely the point. ![]()
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