Tracy Emin is one of those art world success stories that either buoys artist’s confidence, or depresses the hell out of them. On one hand if that shit has a market anything can, on the other, what the fuck? Her work is shallow, immature, and is executed with all the skill of a second year art school project.
And so, it seems some how appropriate that Lehmann Maupin, the gallery with enough fencing to make you feel like you are about to participate in an episode of The Ultimate Fighter, is featuring Emin’s latest failure. This year, Emin loses another match in “the battle of love”, and breaks up with someone she actually cares about. The result is that she upgrades one of the many men from her Saatchi tent to solo show status.
Now, heartbreak doesn’t have to be boring and annoying, but there is no hope for uncensored heartbreak. And this is exactly what we are presented with; A slew of scrawled notes on scraps of fabric about lost love and the dullest wolf-in-sunset video in the world, both of which, enough to leave any viewer scratching the walls, searching for a way out. Unbelievably, the video inspired an equally ill concieved series of wolf paintings, that are poorly accomplished and trite. The most interesting thing you can say about the show is that it looks as though the process is entirely stream of consciousness. Which is only to say that it does not seek to be better than what it is…a rather unfortunate statement for work that really should.
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