gone to san diego for the weekend

I'm headed south for the weekend. So, here are some review tactics to chew on:

"Does anyone like Adel Abdessemed’s exhibition at David Zwirner? Past endless Facebook debate, and slams from major publications, the only positive reviews I’ve read (if you can call them that) are descriptive....
As a general rule of thumb I tend not to respond to this kind of art – having the shit scared out of me due to an empathetic response isn’t what I look for from an artist..." Paddy Johnson/AFC

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"...Either way, the artist failed to make a successful painting...Similarly, the awkward handling seems more forgivable, if for no other reason than the pubescent subjects suffer from corresponding problems." Paddy Johnson/The L Magazine

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"...The tape freaked me out, turned me off, and even outraged me...I looked, I shuddered, I passed on to the next disappointing work, not giving the moral dimensions of Usine too much thought...Still, I did come away from the Abdessemed piece knowing more than ever that I don’t believe in certainty, that even though the work wasn’t good, I was snagged by the paradox it raised about what kills what..." Jerry Saltz/NYMag

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"Someday the Museum of Modern Art will be filled with nothing but flat screen televisions projecting slow moving, high definition video paintings for the delectation of future generations who never heard of Picasso...If artists like Mik truly believed the grimness of their production, they would all rot in their beds." Charlie Finch/artnet

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"Later this month, the artist [Kate Gilmore] will decamp to Miami, where she plans to hurl herself to the bottom of a very deep ditch, then try to get out. 'I’m nervous about that one,' says Gilmore, who’s been lifting weights and bulking up in preparation. 'I’ll get out. It may not be the way I want to get out, it may not be pretty, but I’ll get out. Hopefully.'" Amy Laroc/NYMag

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"MATTHEW COLLINGS: How deep should art be?
SATAN: It should be deep Matt, very deep indeed.
You say it so glibly as if you don't take the question seriously.
I don't.
Well where do you get your reputation for knowledge, your evil wisdom -- the ability to see within everyone?
I live in a place of ice, freezing, really unpleasant, and in there I'm eating the bodies of the great betrayers, Cassius and Brutus, who betrayed Julius Caesar, and Judas, who betrayed Jesus. I'm eating them forever. For eternity -- it's Hell - the worse place. I'm always thinking while eating. And over the centuries people have realised I have certain insights. But I don't think about the art world much.
What shows have you seen recently?
I hardly ever go any more..." Matthew Collings/Saatchi Online

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PUT DOWNS AND SUCK UPS: MATTHEW COLLINGS' WEEKLY VENTINGS ABOUT THE ART WORLD NO 20: ART WRITING
"Should art writing be high-minded and refined, with a lot of honing, corrections and rethinks, or should it be spontaneous like a blog? Should it be self-indulgent or earnestly careful and considered? If it's the latter does it run the risk of being sterile and boring? And is the problem of the former that while venting can be entertaining it kind of lowers the tone of the whole thing generally, the whole thing being this great enterprise, art, with all its philosophical, aesthetical, moral and ethical meanings? Who does it anyway? Art writing I mean. Are they failures and losers? What would they be if they were winners? Artists, yes, of course, but what are artists, what on earth do they do? What is art now that the olden-days stuff is over? Contemporary art: this ragbag of hustling bullshit -- steady on! ..." Matthew Collings/Saatchi Online