Anna Solal, Philipp Timischl, Johanna Ulfsak, Agnes Scherer, Joshua Citarella, Robertas Narkus 'Don't take it too seriously'

Artists: Anna Solal, Philipp Timischl, Johanna Ulfsak, Agnes Scherer, Joshua Citarella, Robertas Narkus
Curated by Alexander Burenkov
 

Is there any value in an exhibition so self-ironic that it does not attempt to convey anything to the viewer? Or is it merely pretending to be ironic—consistent with the current zeitgeist—while masking its direct statements and avoiding any manifestos? 

In his 1990 book E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction, David Foster Wallace noted that popular culture (primarily television, of course) had begun to shun seriousness. Instead, it was more willing to flirt with the absurd, repetition, self-quotation, and other postmodernist devices. Wallace provided examples: a sitcom in which the characters are aware they are in a sitcom; a commercial where a satisfied customer admits he is merely an actor paid to appear in the film. He argued that in a self-ironic culture, any display of sincerity and humanity can either be ridiculed or viewed with cynicism. Wallace feared that post-irony was gradually erasing the boundaries between humanism and cruelty, humanity and indifference, values and cruel jokes. Did he anticipate that in the quarter-century since, post-irony would become nearly the only way to cope with our surrounding reality? How did we transition from being ironic to operating with statements that only pretend to be ironic? 

Post-irony, and the constant balancing between humor and sincerity, is symptomatic of depoliticization and offers an easy escape for those who have lost their bearings and ceased to take moral, political, or civic positions regarding the world around them. This inability to be serious has political consequences: it exacerbates alienation among people, polarization, and political apathy. Post-irony has emerged as a response to confusion in the face of rapid changes and information overload. According to the Italian philosopher Franco Berardi, this overabundance of information is causing a kind of depression within world culture. Irony acts as a response, transforming our fears, anxieties, frustrations, anger, disappointments, and apathy into unreal objects, memes, and jokes. The only issue is that if a phenomenon is ridiculed postironically, it does not cease to exist or impact real life. 

Obligatory irony is the term Mehdi Belhaj Kacem uses to define the modern situation in his work “On Irony”: "Once upon a time, from the time of Socrates to Kierkegaard, irony was an elitist and aristocratic art. But now, for more than three decades, irony has become, ahem, a raison d’état—a purely political reason for action." What does this mean? The generational evidence that has paralyzed us includes derision, a depreciative perspective, and the mockery of others as well as oneself, coupled with the media-centered omnipresence of the comic and of sarcasm, imitation, and satire. Irony has democratized itself. Nobody seems able to take anything seriously anymore. This plebeianization of irony has become, without a doubt, not just a self-defensive strategy for survival amid the controversies of reality, but one of the principal symptoms of the “spirit of nihilism” in our zeitgeist. Irony takes center stage as a weapon against the over-professionalization of every aspect of our lives and the strict regulations governing our actions online under platform capitalism. It drains much joy from life and occupation, and sometimes you may even forget why you are doing what you’re doing. Irony appears to bring meaning back to life; when there is no sense in anything, irony can infuse it with vitality. A feature of contemporary subjectivity, marked by irony, constantly showcases a spirit of omni-derision—which suggests that one can never be fooled by anything. Ironically, we may now be fooled by everything. 

Avalanches of fake news, friends turned into Flat Earthers or ultra-rightists, internet folklore, pseudoscience, memes, conspiracy theories, radical internet subcultures, and new approaches to conducting online research create a schizophrenic, doomsday informational buzz that marks a massive aesthetic rupture in post-digital art production. This buzz gives rise to new forms of hyper-ironic, eclectic storytelling inspired by the absurdities of reality. Drawing from the paranoid modalities of contemporary post-irony in social life and the debris of the cozy web, the artworks on display demonstrate how to live, create, and conspire on an increasingly adversarial and fractured internet and in a broader world that requires new forms of metaironic narratives—narratives that allow us to convince ourselves that we still control and understand the complex reality around us.  

The works in the exhibition are not silent objects; they actively engage in a cacophony of various post-ironic voices, commenting on each other and adding additional layers of irony to the dialogue. Canvases, screens, windows, and walls in Austrian artist Philipp Timischl's installations are aligned, collaged, and automated to generate outputs of distinct subjectivities, giving voice to narratives that maneuver between documentation and fiction, often through intimacy, self-reference, and humor. These elements sharply render the mediated nature of contemporary existence and the unspeakable boundaries of our collective public sphere. His paintings, with built-in screens bearing titles like "I Love My Brain and Thinking" and "Far From Intellectual," require no effort on the part of the viewer; they behave like characters worn out by life, commenting on the absurdity of contemporary existence.  

Anna Solal combines the detritus of civilization—whether smartphone circuit boards, plastic toys, or cosmetics—with a vivid pictorial language infused with the anxieties and tensions of adolescence, reflecting the violence of modern technology on humanity. In a recent series of “selfie” portraits, the artist replaces faces with masks that are not merely metaphorical images of Instagram filters smoothing out our skin, but gestures of violence that unearth our hidden monstrosity. 

By weaving functional everyday objects—nets, screens, scarves, carpets—Estonian artist and textile designer Johanna Ulfsak interprets the experience of human life as part of a larger social fabric that is intertwined and inseparably interlinked. Driven by her interest in the contradictions between intimate craftsmanship and industrial production methods, Ulfsak's latest works, inspired by CAPTCHA images and iconic retro screensavers and desktop wallpapers, explore meditative states and nostalgic memories filled with a light irony common to entire generations. 

Lithuanian artist Robertas Narkus often draws inspiration from the world of business and startups, paradoxically merging the spirit of optimism and entrepreneurial drive with the bitterness of disappointment. This creates a tragicomic and ambiguous irony stemming from the recognition of defeat in the face of the all-pervasive neoliberal system. His ongoing series of bricolage installations, “The Board,” features anthropomorphic characters crafted from trash and scraps, representing a new and yet unnamed form of life. These characters gather at a meeting of a secret organization, committee, or council, deciding the fate of humanity via an endless video conference. The cast of characters from German artist Agnes Scherer’s "My refuge, my treasure, without body, without measure" that populate her architectural paintings and plaster sculptures are all conceived as containers, carriers of some exchangeable value. Formed by the diagrammatic vernacular of comic illustration and folk sculpture, they point to the sombre horizon: the final day of judgement, or even redemption, inevitably imposed from the outside; the threshold between one world and the next. Finally, American artist and internet culture writer Joshua Citarella explores internet communities and how they facilitate the development of identities. Through his series of flags, he addresses E-deology, a critical internet slang term for hyper-specific ideological categories, which serve as a gamified form of identity play and personal branding in the chaotic landscape of online politics. The artist has created original flags for highly specific ideologies encountered online, providing these mostly internet-based communities with a sense of real-world validation. Notable movements include Libertarian Georgist Hoppeanism, Anarcho-Mutualist Distributism, and Queer Anarcho-Primitivism.  

Was this text self-ironic enough to keep you reading to the end without getting distracted by another tab in your browser? Will you visit the exhibition and feel the rapid streams of post-irony rolling over you wave after wave, trying not to drown in it? Just don't take it too seriously. 

 

Text: Alexander Burenkov 

Exhibition is supported by The Cultural Endowment of Estonia and Punch Drinks.