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'Group Show' by Joshua Abelow at Real Pain Fine Arts, Los Angeles

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Do Beavis and Butthead foreshadow the existence of Donald Trump the way, say, Ubu Roi prefigures the existence of Philip Guston’s Nixon? Or maybe they are all one and the same thing, variations on a theme, (slightly) different incarnations of the same monster? I remember being seized by a stark existential dread when first encountering Beavis and Butthead on MTV. It had less to do with the thought, “So it has come to this,” than with the bewildering lack of surprise occasioned by their advent in the world. They seemed somehow inevitable, of the order of fate, a curse–ancient, Greek, and yet, inscrutable, like an abstraction. The inverse of hubris, they effortlessly sought to remind me of my basest instincts, my meanest, most un-celebratable self.

Every time I tune into the pettiness of Donald Trump, his colossal self-centeredness, I am reminded of not what a monster, but actually how human he is. Or if not human, then Id-like. Indeed, one could say that he is pure injured Id, ungoverned by any real coherent ego, and wholly ignorant of the remotest notion of super-ego. Not that a Freudian equation would necessarily remedy or justify his existence in the world, but, as much as I hate to admit it, he is definitely in me. Or I in him. And in all of us. Hence his timelessness. His parodic atemporality. For he is a parody. “Always already” a parody, this man, this spiritually squalid and abject crime of a human being, is always waiting to remind us that he is standing much closer to us than many of us are willing to admit. In fact, he is right there.

So is Beavis. And Butthead. 

— Chris Sharp

21.9.19 — 12.11.19

Real Pain Fine Arts

'ABSINTHE', Group Show Curated by PLAGUE at Smena, Kazan

'Pupila' by Elizabeth Burmann Littin at Two seven two gallery, Toronto

'Auxiliary Lights' by Kai Philip Trausenegger at Bildraum 07, Vienna

'Inferno' by Matthew Tully Dugan at Lomex, New York

'Зamok', Off-Site Group Project at dentistry Dr. Blumkin, Moscow

'Dog, No Leash', Group Show at Spazio Orr, Brescia

'Syllables in Heart' by Thomas Bremerstent at Salgshallen, Oslo

'Out-of-place artifact', Off-Site Project by Artem Briukhov in Birsk Fortress, Bi

'Gardening' by Daniel Drabek at Toni Areal, Zurich

'HALF TRUTHS', Group Show at Hackney Road, E2 8ET, London

'Unknown Unknowns' by Christian Roncea at West End, The Hague

'Thinking About Things That Are Thinking' by Nicolás Lamas at Meessen De Clercq,

‘Funny / Sad’, Group Show by Ian Bruner, Don Elektro & Halo, curated by Rhizome P

'Don’t Die', Group Show at No Gallery, New York

'Almost Begin' by Bronson Smillie at Afternoon Projects, Vancouver

'I'll Carry Your Heart's Gray Wing with a Trembling Hand to My Old Age', Group Sh

'hapy like a fly' by Clément Courgeon at Colette Mariana, Barcelona

'Fear of the Dark' by Jack Evans at Soup, London

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