Let me Introduce Myself

Perfectly strange and fucked up show at CSA says nothing about the work and everything about my attitude, which is unsupportable.

Before entering, a laminated letter-sized piece of paper with the title Let me Introduce Myself (note the lowercase"m" in "me"), the artist's name -- Michael Lachman -- and this criminally comic text by Lyndsay Pomerantz.

With the text read, a sense of this advertised "[-]self" as a comedian or a counterfeiter, and a deeper sense that the two are not unrelated. At the centre of the room, taste, as repped by purple latex tongues on tripods, St. Christopher's medals hanging from them? (St. Christopher: famous for carrying a child unknown to him across a river-- that child being Christ, who turns 2023 on Wednesday.)

On the south wall, a pair of dress pants, their pockets turned out and out-sized. Against the north and west walls, two wordy briefcases ("wordy" for their slightly outsized hard-cornered wooden handles). The case at the west end is open and I ask that you look at it:

A ceiling has been installed (lowered), and forever falling from it are a pair of hands, and inside a figure sitting. The carpet, too, is institutional and doesn't fit, so it is added to, and in doing so, the space is converted from a gallery to an impoverished or pop-up office.

Everything we need to know (or be affirmed in knowing) about life as a young artist (or critic) can be found in this show. Everything.

As you leave, a calendar to the left of the door. It is December, and the image above is a cartoon frog swimming out to sea with a scorpion on its back, the frog's frog friends looking on with concern.

Like I said, Everything!