Reorienting contemporary art to questions of labour and class, as this exhibition purports to, would be outright reactionary. Elsewhere, even the queer and post-colonial revolutions are already passé, having made no one’s life better. What would it take, hypothetically, for a struggling artist to take control of the means of aesthetic production?
That is not the aim of Genuine Fake Premium Economy, however. Gregory’s oil renderings of Patek Philippe adverts set the tone, pointing to other people’s desires as the object of capital. Ellison’s sparse arrangement of office paraphernalia calls for aesthetic refusal and has a feel of American Psycho to it, granted. But his wealth management graphics link art and capital in an entirely different manner.
Bliss’s pre-2008 art fair satire flic, by contrast, is well observed, funny, and well cast. Yet it, too, understands art in terms the contemporary can no longer bear. Together, these slight objects only obfuscate, promoting despite themselves indulgent, out-of-date theories.
