Ren Hang ‘Human/Nature’ at Capricious 88

The theme is a twine of two strands: the uncanny connection of human bodies and questionable distinction of humanity from nature.   By Owen Campbell, ASX, March 2015 The fifth floor gallery space of Capricious 88, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, is large and airy, with south-facing windows facilitating bright sunlight even on overcast days. […]

Death and More Death – Dash Snow’s ‘I Love You Stupid’

@ The Estate of Dash Snow and Courtesy DAP Art shouldn’t be a product of the art world, but a product of the world world.   By Owen Campbell I told my friend I was reading Glenn O’Brien’s intro essay to Dash Snow’s I Love You, Stupid. He said he always thought Dash Snow was […]

Challenging State Power and the Passivity of Citizens in ‘Covert Operations’

Nucelear Waste Encapsulation and Storage Facility, Cherenkov Radiation, Hanford Site, U.S. Department of Energy, Southeastern Washington State, 2005/2007 @ Taryn Simon and courtesy Gagosian Gallery   “Whatever our personal weaknesses may be, the nobility of our craft will always be rooted in two commitments, difficult to maintain; the refusal to lie about what one knows and […]

20 Years of Planetary Alignment in Ed Templeton’s ‘Wayward Cognitions’

@ Ed Templeton These are the moments when the planets are aligned, when the eyes of the passer-by meet the camera and when metaphor slides into reality.   By Owen Campbell, ASX, February 2015 There’s a signature expression in an Ed Templeton photograph; it’s not something that he gravitates to, rather, it’s something that occurs […]

Tape, Rope, Water, Milk and Bondage in ‘Other Rooms’

The images present a bloodless eroticism, uncanny, simultaneously sexual and absented of desire.   By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 Tanlines, tape, rope, water, milk, Callis shows the way things push against the body and how the body pushes back, contracts, evades. Elements like water and shade subsume the human body; rope, as it presses […]

INTERNET GOTHIC in Doug Rickard’s ‘N.A.’

 XZc7w, 2011 @ Doug Rickard   Horrorcore, a sort of contemporary American gothic, with all the inherent inversion of values.   INTERNET GOTHIC and Transcendentalism in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 In the preface of National Anthem Doug Rickard quotes Walt Whitman; in the coda he quotes Woodie Guthrie. […]

Humid and Moist, a High-Definition Look at Bush in Minter’s ‘Plush’

  The pubes, natural, died white or starchy, mascara-black, are run through by fingers, caressed, teased out and tugged on.     By Owen Campbell, ASX, January 2015 To talk about Plush in the typical language of criticism, to say it is warm, close or intimate is understatement tantamount to mistruth. Marilyn Minter’s book is […]

Pierced privacies served up hot and cold in KARMA (2014)

 @ Óscar Monzón Pierced privacies served up hot and cold in KARMA.   By Owen Campbell, ASX, December 2014 Óscar Monzón’s Karma is a book of shining surfaces on glossy paper, of sharp colors and high saturation but cold affect. As a document, Karma confounds interpretation by absence of context. There is almost no language to the […]