Tropical Codes (Pt. 2)
By Tricia Collins and Richard Milazzo
In the postmodern culture of the Spectacle, it does not suffice for a thing to be itself. It is driven into the false otherness of a representation. A thing acquires its sense of authority by becoming again, in being twice. Nothing is itself, while everything becomes the same. It is this sameness, the ironical and paradoxical sameness of the Other, an authoritarian sameness, that virtually dictates a kind of ontologi-cal standard – the Normal exquisitely (professionally) operative in the sphere of Surfaces.
– So many images in New York right now speak subliminally to us about the reification of corporate America.
– A reification that generates a morbid after-glo.
-The morbid after-glo of the Corporate Sublime in America.
– Walter Robinson’s new “spin” paintings function like logos for this depletion in reverse.
– Irradiated auras.
-The ultimate psychedelic button.
-And, then, of course, there’s Peter
Nagy’s “cancer” paintings, and their “signs of malignancy.”
– Unlike the lurid colors in Robinson’s “spin” paintings, Nagy’s black and white xeroxlike paintings are totally leuchemic.
– I also keep thinking of Anette Le-mieux’s new work in contrast to Peter Halley’s day glo paintings.
– Like Robinson’s paintings, Halley’s cells and conduits glow with the fury of the institutional Sublime.
– On another level, Robinson’s deinstitutionalized “spins” contradict Haley’s severe, diagramtic environments.
– Lemieux’s work, in contrast to Robinson and Halley’s, is mournful and internalized, extreme in its pathos.
– Sorrowful emblems of those lost to formal conflicts.
– Reified ‘stars and stripes’ generate the posthumous structures and ironic embles of her…
