Towards Vibes

I cringe at Polyester magazine; The obsessive categorization of images, constant flowing of new -cores and subgenre hyper-specificity can be exhausting. The vernacular of the girl-blogger has entered the physical world, the white cube, the art space. It has been freed from the wilderness of memes, stan twitter and Instagram comment sections. However, I state that there is value in vibes.

I want to argue in favour of this form of discourse: the mode of list-based, mood-board speech is a valid form of engagement within the discussion of contemporary art. This form of critique is based on relationality. It keys in on the connection between the viewer and the artwork in a culturally informed, semiotically considered and contemporarily engaged way. It functions as a lead into the affect of the 'object' for us, the viewers; pure postmodern beings. The value of it comes from its identification and recognition of reference points, influences and historical contexts that the art leads to, or speaks from. And as a result, the mood/feeling connected to it- Signs, symbols and representations.

Since the birth of conceptual art, it’s discussion, predominantly within academia and though forms of critical writing, we have collectively ignored a central tenet in the experience of art- this is, to borrow a term from philosophical navel-gazers: aesthetics. However, to separate our position from traditionalist ideologies that led the way to race science, and the colloquial terms used within tik-tok hashtags, it might be better to understand aesthetics as 'formal qualities'. These formal qualities - be they flat plane, spatial or dematerialized - have meaning and conceptualizations embedded within them. Forms are not produced; the artist channels them. They are already given, existent in culture and the collective imagination; they are manifest, or manifested.

Separating the artist as an endowed genius is useless in the post-institutional age. The artist and viewer are the same. All cultural 'objects', forms, therefore all art - is a text to be read and interpreted. They are not still objects sitting in cultural stasis as definitive statements. They are festering, evolving, self-replicating entities.

If an artwork's formal qualities echo a hollowness or superficiality, those characteristics could be a proactive comment put forward by the artist. The work of Jordan Wolfson and Mark Leckey, gestures towards an emptiness in the contemporary world. Additionally, similar qualities present in Kaws or other "red chip" artists could be read just as much as a text, an artifact that speaks to a current moment. Vibes are for discussion, media literacy, interpretation.

I believe that it is better that an artwork speaks to something, moves towards more than against; I have always found a resonance with Paul McCarthy's cracked mirror analogy. "Art is a mirror to society, but a mirror with a crack in it so you can tell it’s a mirror". Art is not base reality so should not endeavour in a perverted attempt to replicate it purely or to neatly fit normative societal situations. Art sits at and as an influx, an experience, a moment in-between. To me, in this form - art is true and honest. I don’t go to art to be comforted, I go to art to be understood, to be felt. Present in the artwork a fragment of myself is reflected in the expression. Through the artwork: the self, the artist, all become one, linked by art, relating between realities, understandings, truths.