04 May 2018

Art in the Age of the Internet, 1989 to Today

Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston

Reviewed by Franklin Einspruch

This sprawling exhibition may be the most ambitious show that the ICA/Boston has ever attempted at its waterfront location. It also feels original in a way that the ICA does not often achieve, with less emphasis on oversold contemporary staples and more on fresher figures like Juliana Huxtable, Amalia Ulman, and aaajiao.

Enormous credit goes to curator Eva Respini for the fact that the show is orderly and not like, well, the internet. A thematic organization, with sections like "Hybrid Bodies" and "States of Surveillance," coheres rooms of disparate art sensibly.

At the physical and philosophical heart of the show is Safe Conduct (2016) by Ed Atkins, a CGI animation on multiple screens in which a distressingly surreal and unflinchingly bloody choreography plays out at an airport security checkpoint. Like the logger atop the exhibition's dedicated site that posts your physical location, it prompts surprise at what is possible and dread about what we've gotten ourselves into.