Bryce Kroll & Andrew Rutherdale's show at Dungeon in Detroit.
Bryce Kroll & Andrew Rutherdale: Entombmentproof
April 23 - May 9 2021
Dungeon, Detroit
In mummification the body becomes the sign of abstraction, both commodity and producer of commodity simultaneously. The removed organs are treated like the symbols of material wealth, the inequivalence of each naked on display. Caught in the event, the pandemic-subject’s death is treated as it was in life. Alone or among only strangers. Medical workers sealed in plastics and fibers, cloistered in synthetics, move around the COVID victim in scientific ritual. Last moments are shared through screens, the vector’s gaze transforming the subject into temporary-content (the final act of the infinite-scroll), flattened and turned to data. No human touch. Alienated. Trapped in the boundaries of protocol. Sealed in an HRP’s non-porous death-womb. [...] The final skype call, the last screenshot, the funeral stream, the dry fireless burial not-on-the-banks, the vulture eaten, the body behind glass, behind screen shrouded in data, the empty streets, the mass grave, lack of warmth from the remaining, the delayed burial, the mobile morgue. The towering displays of dead labor, of humanity on reserve, the pyramids, the Falcon 9, the tomb, the death mask, the colonized planet, the mummified body, the economy, the skyscraper, the oil derrick, the internet-server, AI-reincarnation. The pandemic-proof public space, siloized and shrinking. The unentombable.
-Ian Bruner
Bryce Kroll (born 1990) lives and works in New York. He holds a BFA from School of Visual Arts, New York (2013). Forthcoming exhibitions include Final Hot Desert, Utah; and Gern en Regalia, New York. Past exhibitions include 131 Mott, New York, NY (curated by Francisco Correa Cordero and Underground Flower); Super Dutches Gallery, New York, NY; and Project Fabrika, Moscow, Russia. Recent publications include Tussle and Office Magazine.
Andrew Rutherdale (born 1990) lives and works in Montreal. He holds a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2019). Forthcoming exhibitions include Final Hot Desert, Utah; and Light Harvesting Complex, Vanta, Finland. Past exhibitions include Like a Little Disaster, Polignano a Mare, Italy, and Family Gallery, Montreal.
