#currentmood, and the art that reflects our strange social media revelations

Date
23 May 2016

How are you #feeling? #allthefeels? Really, though, IRL, #allthefeels is not just meaningless, but more irritating than that cousin that posts the inspirational memes, the ex-colleague with the baby pictures or that person you met once at a house party who’s all about cryptic “not ok” type commentary.

The irksome tropes of social media, and the irritation most of us face at finding ourselves gazing mindlessly at them all too often is well documented. And while it’s easy to bitch and moan about it, it’s not as easy to at once satirise, question and interrogate this peculiar digital language and lexicon. Brooklyn-Based artist Cory Arcangel can, and does so superbly in his new exhibition currentmood.

The exhibition, currently on show at London’s Lisson Gallery, takes content as medium, extending beyond the gallery walls and into a series of online interventions that were disseminated prior to the show, and throughout its tenure. This “promoted content” places Arcangel’s work in parallel and as similar important to any other intrusive online ads or grabby clickbait. In this way, he’s simultaneously saying that neither piece of “content” has more import than the other; both use the same mode of delivery yet the contexts in which they were created elevate one to an artwork, and reduce one to almost spam.

Comprising photography, video works and sound installation pieces which emit a white noise that’s at once soothing and unnerving, alongside these amorphous digital works, the gallery show looks to explore ideas of “obsession and obsolescence” in today’s technologically dependent landscape, neatly encompassed by the title – something Arcangel frequently uses to describe his own #currentmood.

Reflecting the dizzying and often banal bluster of imagery and content we face almost unseeingly every day online, the works are a mass of found and repurposed imagery from as disparate sources as scans of Ibiza flyers, tracksuits and magazines, default Photoshop image effects, commercial and mobile phone photography, low-res screen captures and reprints of the artist’s previous works.

Arcangel’s refusal to acknowledge one sort of culture of creation as “high” culture and one as “low” places him firmly into e traditional of postmodernism, reflecting the values of pop artists’ in his plundering of the everyday to create fine art pieces. Where the everyday in the 1960s was comic books and soup tins, the ubiquitous items of the 21st Century are social media hashtags, keyboard graphics and pixels. Everything is one in the same for Arcangel, and his clever delivery coupled with his democratic, self-aware and wry look at cultural modes make him a vital and visceral talent.

Cory Arcangel, currentmood, runs until 2 July at Lisson Gallery, London

Above
Left

Cory Arcangel: Dawgs / Lakes, 2016
© Cory Arcangel; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Right

Cory Arcangel: Russell’s #3 / Lakes, 2016
© Cory Arcangel; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Above

Cory Arcangel: Russell’s #3 / Lakes, 2016
© Cory Arcangel; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Above

Cory Arcangel: Hank, 2016
© Cory Arcangel; Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

Above

Tim Barber: Portrait of Cory Arcangel
© Cory Arcangel

Share Article

About the Author

Emily Gosling

Emily joined It’s Nice That as Online Editor in the summer of 2014 after four years at Design Week. She is particularly interested in graphic design, branding and music. After working It's Nice That as both Online Editor and Deputy Editor, Emily left the company in 2016.

It's Nice That Newsletters

Fancy a bit of It's Nice That in your inbox? Sign up to our newsletters and we'll keep you in the loop with everything good going on in the creative world.