published in: New York TWICE, Air de Paris, Paris 2005
North Drive Press #2, New York 2005     

Seth Price - Not Making Sense

It's 2004. Just as Iggy sang in '1969', there is nothing to do all across the USA. With a retro logic we could label this time the Fall of Diverted Information, or the Power of Oil. Looking for contemporary strategies, Seth Price's show at Reena Spaulings gallery doesn't operate in revival mode.

Upon entering the show, one sees several sheets of plastic hanging on the walls. Some sheets are blue with velvety flocking, like a late, misconceived flower-power contribution; others are gold, a sexy pearlescent skin color, or white, vacuum-formed under heat, all traces of production left intact. There are three recurring shapes on the sheets. One is the form of a single breast, reminiscent of Duchamp's 'prier a toucher'. This hard, pliable plastic may be touched in the stack of sheets leaning by the gallery entrance, where their visual function has been eclipsed by their empty behinds on display. Other pieces show the form of a small encaged fist, bulging out in a feeble effort to burst through, no cries for justice can be heard. "2004" is embossed on several sheets in a straight Franklin Gothic-like typeface, not spray painted as with 'old school' political slogans, rather semi-elegant, sad, in a Warholesque repeat, without empowering the sign, no climax in sight.

The colors of the sheets and their relief shapes make one think of Yves Klein, whose 'trademark' blue has here morphed into a plastic surface with a vegetation pattern, French Revolution lily style. Klein staged his show "Le Vide" in 1958. His opening presented an empty gallery, with the surrounding circumstances considered all the way down to the drinks, which were blue: proposing to the audience to see what we don't see and not see what we expect to see; an invisibility. In classic Klein spirit, Price's invite is purposefully considered as integral to the show. A gig poster to bring home as a souvenir: a direct, albeit black and white, take on Hipgnosis's classic cover for Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' album, the gray spectrum of which recurs in semi-transparent vinyl on the shop window (the gallery used to be a shop). Looking like an artificial, grey-striped sunset, this gradient bars, in increments, peeking in from the outside, sifting light to the inside, making all less or more visible. How does one speak or circulate information with invisible Internet filters making our choices? It is a different mode than Kundera's ciphered postcards in the Prague spring of 1968. In the former Soviet Union, the coded way of omitting details was directly decodable if you knew how. Now, pushing of meaning and encoding in (post) capitalist information society, where nothing is what it seems (but it is nothing else either); an eternal circulation of rhetoric or ways of saying "it". The medium is not the message. Price uses references to art as if for rhetorical or political means, instead of using, as is customary in an art context, the outer world. The effect is a focus on the signification slides, rather than on societal issues.

In the far end of the room is a 'merchandise table', as if one were at a concert, with items such as books of lyrics, t-shirts silk-screened with the artist's and the gallery's names, as well as a 'logo' from a Jihad video on the internet, and a stack of black CDs. According to the checklist, the CDs contain downloaded footage depicting the 2004 beheading of an American journalist by Pakistani fundamentalists, a file which the FBI had been trying to bar from flowing freely on the internet. To see what is not simply a black, circular, stacked, formalist shape, one has to purchase it, for the reasonable price of $10--a weak sales pitch by corporate standards--or be left believing we've been voluntarily filtered away.

Other stacked CDs support three flat, equally-sized glass panels, mounted on what looks like corporate, imitation marble, or maybe the surface of the moon. I am told the images are scans of bread. It looks moldy. The panels alter the function of the CDs, from information bearers into bearers of something altered that looks like something fake. Information collapses into material. On one of the panels is a transparent frozen puddle, like vertically positioned cum, which runs neither up nor down. It is liquid glass: see-through to see what you already think you see. Right next to it, sort of pouring over the old coat-rack structure inherent to the gallery, is a sheet of safety glass, broken but all clinging together. Not fully splintered, as in the accidentally-broken large glass by Duchamp - no release - yet not all together in its perfect original state. The title 'Fuck You, You Fucking Fuck', speaks of unreleased, misdirected or omni-directional anger: impotently it doesn't go anywhere, like hanging glass too cracked to see through. Once the title - taken from a popular New York tourist tee - was circulated in print reviews it was switched to 'NTSC', the American video standard, creating a rip in the distribution of information.

On the floor, a video in which Richard Serra and Robert Smithson discuss their faith in the art market is screened on a new Panasonic TV/DVD player still in its styrofoam packaging and box. Both merchandise and video have a virginal air around them, as they have never been seen before. Both have been diverted from their original function. The video has been altered with a digital video transition, created by Price, with the appearance of black opaque liquid, flowing like oil, sensually wiping the image in and out with no cuts. Like the perfect commercial: we are captured, remaining to see the next wipe of the scene - a discussion dragging on with no climax - while keeping our gaze on the product, prisoner in its styrofoam case, submissively inviting scrutiny from any angle from its upturned position on the floor.

We don't see what we see. The interface doesn't take us anywhere. Liquids don't flow well, black oil is turned into plastic, bread looks like the moon, and the spectral light has been drained of all color. The dark side of black shiny CDs is conceivable, but not visible. Transparency and opacity are not useful in understanding the information. The logic is warped, it is not making sense. This is not 'rebus art', although it may seem as if knowing that this is an image of bread and not 'fake' marble makes you feel sane and temporarily in control - more on the bright side of the moon - as if having ceased the circulation of possible significations. Here is a constant diversion of the channels of circulation of signs, barring possibilities for making sense. No satisfaction in sight, an infertile terrain, the original purpose or function of so many elements temporarily obstructed: this show is perverted. "It is 2004, baby".