Jordan Wolfson’s art delights me a little—which may be a strange thing to say for an artist whose most recent installation centers on a human-like robot being brutally tortured for the entertainment of its spectators.
But Wolfson (b. 1980) delights me because I have this hypothesis that contemporary art—one of its strands, at least, particularly the neo-Koonsian strain of which Wolfson is an enthusiastic partisan—is developing an identity that can best be described as adult theme-park entertainment. And Wolfson’s creepy animatronic art happens to be a note-perfect illustration of how the circuit between the museum and the fairground will be closed.
Well, W magazine offers the following chirpy assessment of the meaning of Colored sculpture: “While the metal chains that drag the bot thrashing from floor to ceiling sure look painful, don’t worry, it’s all for a good cause: to land you a memorable Instagram.”