Laurel Nakadate: Only the Lonely

PS1 MoMA - New York

By Marco Antonini

Considering the formal and conceptual consistency of many of the presented works, Laurel Nakadate’s early to mid-career retrospective at PS1 seemed unnecessarily all-inclusive, a visual assault that left me wondering how really necessary such a tribute could have possibly been. Nakadate is a young artist, and much of her work is based on the exploitation of her own beautiful youth, and the predictable powers it confers her when put in relation to the drab, colorless existences of aging white men, as well as the generic gaze of the audience. The artist wears her flexi, supple body like a costume or an armor. Her now sweetly deer-like, now morbidly sexy eyes are guns pointed in the direction of men (and, more recently, women) she seems to be eager to exploit in all possible ways to produce art. A large majority of this art follows a tried-and-true pattern of sado-masochistic, self-inflicted exploitation, the name of the game being mostly “comment on this without mentioning Feminism if you dare.” If I got this last thing right (a big “if,” I concede), I might already qualify as one of the losers. Tracing connections between Nakadate’s cheap thrills and the-good and bad-art that so many women have produced in response to gender issues and their development in recent social history, anyhow, seems excessive to say the least. At the time of this exhibition, PS1 also featured an exquisite mini-retrospective of video art made by women in the last 30 years or so, with gems by Dara Birnbaum, Pipilotti Rist, Joan Jonas, and more. The works reflected on women’s identities and changing roles, much as Nakadate did. Her naively presented persona-shallowly happy here, unconvincingly sad there-told much about where women are at, and where more and more of them are willing to go to satisfy their own narcissism and fit into their role as smart, sexy, high-spending bullseyes on the marketing target. If we are dealing in reverse criticism, however, the awkward execution of Nakadate’s performances fades miserably in front of the brutal, bombastic excess of any given reality TV show and the potential of “proper” mass media trash as unexpected alarm clock to our sleepy consciences. Is it plain exploitation then, or maybe an overextended essay on circular voyeurism? And is this particular form of exploitation to be considered a form of art in itself? I imagined that ending a review in question marks would have been an appropriate way of reporting on a show that seemed to make a point of constantly and frustratingly dodging them.

(January 23 - August 8, 2011)

Marco Antonini is gallery director at NURTUREart in New York, and professor at New Jersey City University. He is a regular contributor to Flash Art, Cura, Whitehot Magazine, among other publications.

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