ERROR:
subscribe to style file blog via RSSdon’t look now
February 21, 2008 12:01 pm
John Waters famously proclaimed, “To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about.” He would certainly have approved of Berlin-based painter Bernhard Martin’s “Prognosefehler” series, presented at his first solo show at Team Gallery in New York, which opens tonight. With their title loosely translating as “failure in prediction,” Martin’s compositions are carefully crafted, unexpected concoctions of disparate references, allusions, and source materials. There might not be enough overt vulgarity to satisfy Waters’ preference for the naughty/dirty variety of bad taste, but Martin’s art is nevertheless an intentional affront to conventional ideas about pictorial harmony and narrative coherence. As Team asks in one of its characteristically well-written press releases—a rare art form in the art world—”The question becomes not what exactly are we looking at, but rather, why are we looking?”
tags:
