by Emily Colucci on October 21, 2016
Some exhibitions raise more questions than they answer. Take Sam McKinniss’ current show Egyptian Violet at team (gallery, inc.), which presents a sense of unease and potential for violence in his fan boy paintings of celebrities and movie characters. The subject matter is thoughtfully curated and carefully painted and yet, it is still difficult to pin down McKinniss’ exact critique. Is it a general representation of our anxiety-ridden era in 2016? A statement, à la A.L. Steiner’s 30 Days of Mo:)rning, about how everything is going wrong at once? A critique of the vacuity of pop culture? A death obsession? Or is there no real social critique at all? I left the show with no clear answer.
Read the full article →
by Michael Anthony Farley on June 11, 2015
This glorious GIF first appeared three years ago on the Brooklyn-based blog Best Roof Talk Ever with the genius quote: “Let 2012 be remembered as the year we brought the mid-nineties back to life with overpriced tickets to 3D renderings of things I thought I forgot about.”
The blogger, Nick Divers, is of course referring to the 2012 resurrection of murdered 90s rapper Tupac Shakur as a hologram performing to concert-goers. That year, the 1997 blockbuster Titanic (itself a nostalgic look back on 1912) was also re-released as a pricey 3D experience.
Is the technology of the future always destined to resurrect the past? It’s 2015 and I’m blogging about a GIF from 2012 about holograms from the 1990s about steamships from 1912 named after mythical beasts from ancient Greece.
Maybe in the 24th century a nostalgic Starfleet officer will recreate this very moment on the holodeck. In the 1990s, Star Trek characters were, after all, obsessed with holographic recreations of the past.
Read the full article →
