Regen Projects - Picture Industry (goodbye to all that) - L.A.

July 17 – August 21, 2010

Organized by Walead Beshty

Twentieth Century debates over the "politics of representation," the autonomy of art, or art's capacity for "critique" still linger like disgruntled spirits on the hunt for living bodies to inhabit. At first, contemporary art looks vaguely amenable to such interpretations: appropriated/pop imagery, collage, the monochrome, automaticism, the aleatory etc. are no less common now than they were when such ideas were a breath of fresh air. But seen through a contemporary lens, the meanings of these strategies are less certain, less overt, as though much contemporary art beckons to these anachronisms only to misdirect them. How better to display ambivalence for such battles than to invite them in only to step gently to the side, behaving, in the terminology of language acquisition, like a false friend?

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