Before being crowded into the
elevator, the only access to the exhibitions at New Museum, I owned
the freedom to exchange conversations with others. After the elevator
left me standing at the entrance to Jim Shaw: The End is Here, the
artist's perspective of the world was forced onto my thoughts. A
survey of Jim Shaw's artistic career invaded three floors of the
museum to display his visions of pop culture and subconsciousness in
drawings, paintings, and installations. However, the overstated pop
culture references caught in the act of sex did little to justify his
expression but narcissism with the desire for attention.
In Jim Shaw's Dream Drawings (1992-99), a series of comic strips with sex being the dominant content recorded the artist's dreams after waking up every morning, revealing the erotic pattern of his subconsciousness. Browsing through an entire room of obscure pornography-like drawings where Micky Mouse bites on a penis and zipper grows on a vagina, I doubted the truthfulness of the project for its quality tailored to satisfy the viewer's curiosity. Pop culture references such as President Kennedy and Wonder Woman are sacrificed to keep the viewer's interest while Jim Shaw tells stories about disgraceful dreams under his interpretation. The collections in the exhibition showed the artist's shallow understanding of human interest through a single lens unworthy of conversation exchange.
I love how every single verbs contain negative connotations. Hinting your stance on Jim Shaw’s works, the readers can notice your despisement just from reading the first sentence. I would have appreciated more explanation of your stance which is full of hatred towards his work. For example, you can describe when exactly his shallow understandings are exposed from his works and point out one of the most clearly unworthy part from the massive three floored exhibition. I really enjoyed reading a review with such a clear animosity from our fellow student writer!
ReplyDelete