Lisson Presents 7

Issue 39, March 2010. See the entire magazine online here.

Lisson Gallery, London
25 November – 16 January

By Coline Milliard

The now-fashionable artist-curated exhibition format has always been a thinly disguised exchange of courtesies, especially when the ‘curatist’ includes some of his/her own works in the show. The young or the midcareer bask in the glow of their illustrious predecessors, inscribing themselves in passing in the great narrative of art history (see for example Mark Wallinger’s The Russian Linesman at London’s Hayward last year), while the elders (think Richard Wentworth’s Boule to Braid at the Lisson Gallery last summer) reaffirm their ‘edge’ by endorsing the up-and-coming. In a commercial context, the format also allows the gallery to introduce a potential stable of artists to collectors without the financial risk of granting solo shows. So good is the system, in fact, that it is now considered enough to justify an exhibition; it seems to magically guarantee any show – at least in the organisers’ eyes – some sort of coherence. The works in Lisson Presents 7 have been selected from the Lisson’s exhibition history by Brooklyn-based artist Cory Arcangel, and the press release waffles about ‘a system of loose associations’, making not even the pretence of a curatorial strategy. What’s left, then, is a string of artworks doing no more together than celebrating, with a disconcerting lack of self-awareness, the gallery’s greats, from Jenny Holzer to Daniel Buren through Rodney Graham and Art & Language (the Lisson’s next show).

Thankfully, Arcangel’s deft dissection of the codes of art reception manages to shine through the Lisson’s hall of fame. His Personal Film (2008) – a tongue-in-cheek take on experimental moviemaking, realised with snippets of damaged film stock – catches the viewer red-handed in a nonsensical exercise of ‘reflex interpretation’, desperately trying to ‘make sense’ when there’s no sense to be made. Likewise, a brash abstract polychrome created using Photoshop’s gradient tool, Photoshop CS: 84 by 66 inches, 300 DPI, RGB, square pixels, default gradient “Spectrum”, mousedown y=3200 x=10200, mouse up y=22600 x=6200, 2009, potently stresses the limits of the system-based artwork à la Buren, whose Zigzag for Two Colours (Paprika & Violet) (2007, also on display) feels in comparison like the unnerving stutters of an artist who has long ago reached the limits of his self-imposed conceptual logic. Photoshop CS divulges in its title the data used for the creation of the piece, somehow updating Blinky Palermo’s Blaues Dreieck (1969), a blue triangle monochrome to be painted by the buyer, who purchased nothing more than a set of tools and instructions. Yet instead of encouraging collectors to take ownership of the work through hands-on fabrication, Photoshop CS gently mocks the with-a-computer-everyone-is-an-artist mentality. Few have tackled the challenges of working on and with the digital as successfully as Arcangel. Since his Super Mario Clouds (2002) – a Nintendovideo cartridge manipulated to erase everything but the clouds floating on a sea-green sky – the artist has developed a fun and potent critique of the countless programs crowding our daily life. It would have been well worth giving it free rein. A Cory Arcangel solo show, anyone?

See this article with full illustrations, plus the entire March issue of ArtReview magazine free on your screen, here.