Finally, installation art that matters

This current exhibition by Karen Kilimnik looks mighty promising at the Philly ICA, as proposed by Roberta Smith at the New York Times. It's just the right amount of thinking, for me. Not too little (party art) and not too much (opaque and overintellectual). I have started to realise that I don't care for much of the latter any longer. This was sparked by a really very dense Liam Gillick show I saw here in Antwerp. It seemed like his old work on acid, visually. I used to like his work - in fact, I glowingly reviewed his 'Communes, Bars and Greenrooms' exhibition at the Power Plant when I was in school. Then again, I had a penchant for deliberately choosing pretentious and contrived work to like, so as to attempt to flex my intellectual muscle (which likely doesn't exist). The thing is, I don't know if I ever really 'got' it in the end. Well, now I know that I don't 'get' that kind of work because as I'm out of the academic art environment, it just doesn't make much of a difference in my mundane everyday life.

Anyway, Kilimnik is clever in presenting a culmination of her oeuvre thus far. Like a neat little package (and I like those), it has just enough of everything without a lot of fuss. Plus, it looks good. Who can complain?