The artist’s latest exhibition is a biting critique of the millennial age in which we live in.
Like Bertold Brecht’s and his epic theatre, painter Christine Wang is a lefty that hopes you leave the gallery questioning some of the activities you previously took for granted. She’s angry. Not just with society but also with herself. Her show ‘Actions speak louder than fonts’ at Nagel Draxler, Berlin, is an exhibition about guilt. Her guilt, but also yours – she hopes. It’s also an exhibition about millennial culture. The world which she draws on lives on the Internet consuming social media and porn; fake news and fashion.
‘My friends, and myself to a certain extent, post feel-good things on the internet but in real life participate in a dark consumerist practice,’ she says. And to illustrate the fact, one painting (Untitled [Instagram], 2017, pictured) is based on an Instagram post that has particularly irked her. ‘What struck me about the Instagram post offering hugs was its failure to list progressive governmental policies and [instead] rather relied on individual actions. I think freedom based on individualism will be doomed to fail. And what is more individualistic than Instagram?’
In another painting we see spray-painted Nazi swastikas defacing a Beastie Boys memorial (Untitled [Trump Voters], 2017, pictured). Whoever the culprit was, they clearly didn’t learn what a swastika looks like. The legs of this notorious symbol of fascism are all over the place. Christine has stamped ‘Trump voters can’t paint’ in big letters using the font commonly found on internet memes.
‘I think that voice in me that says “Trump photos can’t paint” is a dismissive voice that is an extension of our feeling of alienation, that the Trump voters are stupider than I am or less educated,’ she says. ‘This liberal scorn is precisely what led to all of the people on the coastal cities of the United States to think that there is “no way Trump will win.” This liberal scorn reveals the Left’s collective failure to really think about those who are left behind by neoliberalism and poverty.’
There are more works focusing on Trump, along with paintings that deal with rape porn and the lies of consumerism (‘Kate Moss can sell anything’, [Kate Moss, 2017]). Altogether they are certainly engaging and anyone concerned about the age in which we live in will find something that resonates. The pop-art technique reminiscent of Elizabeth Peyton is weirdly fun, considering the dark subject matter. But the show’s title sets up the paradox. The paintings are all very nice, but really are they any deeper than the Internet memes they aim to critique? Aren’t they just another example of what Christine calls ‘virtue signalling’ (when you post something online because it makes you look good, but in practise your real-life actions fail to live up to the same). Wouldn’t it have been more authentic to the concept had Christine actually gone out of the gallery and created something transformative on the street? In a community, like Ai Weiwei, Petr Pavlensky, Tania Bruguera or Rauschenberg’s Overseas Culture Interchange. For this reason, it feels like this exhibition ultimately remains a conceptual failure.
She is perhaps aware of this herself. ‘I’m a painter, and I know that a painting can’t vote,’ she says in the exhibition info sheet. ‘I don’t think there’s any way a painting can be political the way a person can be political.’
‘Actions speak louder than fonts’ is at Nagel Draxler, Berlin, until 4 March.
ZEFFADELICA 