But its ultimate effect is much closer to ambiguity. There are cynical jokes to be made about the VAG specifically-did they cram their space to demonstrate how much they need that new Herzog and de Meuron building?-and about contemporary-art institutions generally-are repeated visits necessitated by cluttered, prolix blockbuster shows an attempt to boost membership sales? But it must be said that “MashUp” is spectacular and impressive, a significant achievement for the VAG. Its anti-Modernist, amusement park–style install, also reminiscent of a contemporary biennial, pays squirrelly attention to the optic, piecemeal ways in which we consume art now.
Knowingly and ambitiously, “MashUp” is an exhibition that wants to be seen, to be Tweeted about, to be of our time.
#Photo mashup install
The VAG was closed for over a month to install it it takes up all four floors of the gallery, with 371 works by 156 artists occupying every nook and cranny. This was on my mind as I visited “MashUp” at the Vancouver Art Gallery, running to June 12. Team-style debate makes work that does not just belong on, but inherently claims, one side or the other. To quote George Orwell in “Politics and the English Language,” “an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely.” Trump, ISIS, “Formation,” Taylor Swift’s Album of the Year Grammy: how could one not feel strongly? So much influential culture now emerges online fully formed-a bazooka blast through a combat zone (a fart in a crowded elevator?). Of course, a polarized audience creates its own polarizing aesthetics. (Facebook had originally designed a sixth button, “yay,” but removed it because it “was not universally understood.”) Facebook’s five new “reaction” buttons seem ironic evidence of this. Acts of criticism may touch us in unprecedented ways, but the virtues of slow criticism-treating the thing on its own terms allowing for equivocal opinion-do not. What is good or bad is gauged, tyrannically (if entertainingly), by convenient juxtapositions with what pre- or coexists: Life of Pablo > Yeezus, Bernie > Hillary.
On social media, comparative binaries, often false dichotomies, are posted earnestly, not rhetorically. The new Met logo, Chris Rock’s Oscar monologue, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life: it’s got to be either love or hate.
We are in a lusty affair with polarities.
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