Contributed by Will Maddoxx / On Valentine’s Day, I walked into Living Skin, a “project space and persons hub” in Bushwick that had piqued my interest when I read its manifesto and perused promotional images for the group show “Hyper-meme.” I came to the show with some hesitation, as I have been to countless group shows that seemed unfocused and vague. Smatterings of “work about histories of images” or “art of a contemporary landscape” have gotten old and deflating. “Hyper-meme,” however, is sharp, original, and hyper-specific. It blew me away.
Curated by Samantha Blumenfeld, the exhibition comprises the work of five artists zoned in on meme culture, pop culture, and the current overflow of mainly digital images. The show’s statement points to Tumblr aesthetics, over-consumption, and Hito Steyerl’s penetrating 2009 essay “In Defense of the Poor Image” as points of departure. The artists here have a penchant for taking images that seem disposable – fleeting, good for a quick laugh – and subverting that status by using fine art materials and techniques. The craftsmanship in Victoria Reshetnikov’s It’s Great That ur here is jarringly immaculate and Samantha Blumenfeld’s drawing america WILL NEVER. Be a SOCIALSIT COUNTRY sardonically appropriates Old Master sketches. Funny imagery is presented with incongruous formality, gently mocking the art establishment’s self-seriousness.
Tong Wang’s Frozen Spider in particular caught my painter’s eye. This strong, nicely conceived piece may be the only outlier in “Hyper-meme” in that it deals more with material than image and seems to be in conversation with sculpture. Bleach, staple, and cleanse your way to an optimized anal cavity (peach emoji) by Ash Hagerstrand, made of plastic, sequins, and acupuncture needles around a screen, does everything a wall-mounted artwork can do and does it very well. The acupuncture needles resonate with Wang’s Accidentally Ate Myself and other digital print installations, which impart restlessness and uneasiness. Of the group, Xianglong Li is the painter’s painter. The mix of symbols, characters, and flat images in his When you woke up after sleeping for 24 hours suggests a contemporary version of Holbein’s The Ambassadors.
“Hyper-meme” should be seen in person. It’s a group show in the best sense of the term.
“Hyper-meme,” Living Skin, 61 Wyckoff Avenue, Brooklyn, NY. Through March 15, 2025. Artists: Samantha Blumenfeld, Ash Hagerstrand, Xianglong Li, Victoria Reshetnikov, Tong Wang.
About the author: Will Maddoxx (he/they/she) is a Brooklyn-based artist from Nashville, TN. He is currently pursuing his MFA at the School of Visual Arts.
