The critic Holland Cotter, in a New York Times review of Ryan Trecartin’s first solo show at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, said:
[…] he definitely owes a debt to the Internet, where everything is allowed because you allow it, and where many people, including several of those in ”I-Be Area,” live full time these days. Mr. Trecartin takes something from all of this and adds something to it, something yet to be described or defined, but newish, and this is great.
*****
Not bad.
Trecartin brought the experience of the Internet world into the world of contemporary art. This is very difficult to do and he did it with fearlessness and a deep insight into what this technology and its associated gadgetry can do to the human mind. The depiction of subjectivity in his videos gets at the experience of being conscious in a totally synthetic, brand-driven hyperreality: manic and overwhelmed by experiential stimulus.
Furthermore, by exaggerating the sense of time in contemporary experience as drastically as he does, Trecartin allows the viewer to see (as if for the first time) what “normal” time looks like right now. The extremity of his vision nudges the viewer’s mind to project their own image of how time functions in order to make a comparison.
Tags: art, drugs, pollock, ryan trecartin, warhol