I posted something about Mik a couple of months ago. More and more I’m impressed that he’s doing something pretty interesting.
It’s kind of like walking into your living room late at night while the TV’s still on with the sound off—if you had a half dozen mammoth plasma screens in your living room. Somehow you left it on C-SPAN, which is showing a roomful of fastidious-looking, seemingly Scandinavian people congregated against ugly wallpaper beneath some scarily domineering chandeliers. What are they debating, precisely? It must have something to do with that mass of attractive, scruffy young people gathered on the expensive carpet to protest . . . something. (One inspired, apparently impromptu moment: A black-haired Bjork look-alike lifts up her T-shirt, gets no response to her black bra, then embarrassedly pulls the shirt back down.) As the fusty politicos jab their forefingers and wag their elbows, the ill-shaven youths sit and lie on the floor and sometimes gesticulate in unison. The subtext of Dutch artist Aernout Mik’s Vacuum Room, 2005, recalls a witty quote from director Peter Sellars: “There’s nothing to teach you about form without content like watching the Supreme Court.”
more from Artforum here.