You didn’t miss it! That Thing From The Nineties is still here, still throwing out nonsense to justify something easy to make.

In the Belgian city of Ghent this month, conceptual artist Kris Martin is having a retrospective entitled Exit.

The photograph shows his work called “Microscope.”  As Wallpaper * puts it,

“‘Exit’ introduces a new piece, Microscope. The concept goes straight to the point, if the point were turned on its head. Like much of his work, it’s a readymade Martin has cunningly tampered with; instead of magnifying objects, it makes them smaller. ‘When looking at people from a distance, they become minuscule, like ants. It shows the relativity of our existence on earth.’”

https://www.wallpaper.com/art/kris-martin-exit-retrospective-belgium

Wow, that’s deep. And I thought my writing on God and Man (internal link) was pretentious.

If you put a microscope on a public railing, a security guard would turn it into the Lost and Found department. Or call in a bomb threat.

There is a fine sculpture on display in the Wallpaper* article, I must assume Martin created it. But what do we make of this?

“Martin’s practice can verge on endurance art. Take Idiot, for which the artist hand-copied all 1494 pages of Dostoyevsky’s novel of the same title, exchanging the name of the protagonist, Myshkin, for his own. ‘I worked for months, like a monk. It was very consuming and at the same time liberating.’”

And that will get you a major exhibition written up by the art world? Reminds me of the Jack Torrance character in The Shining. I wouldn’t get written up, I’d get locked up.

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