“Solace”

The exhibition “Solace” could be one of two things: a reflection of the timeless function of art, or a response to the perfect storm of global misfortune that has left us all in need of a little consolation. To judge by its punch-drunk side-programming—a big medley of maudlin and musical performances—the latter seems more likely. Yet the variety of sensibilities offered throughout, which shows real curatorial derring-do, suggests a far more general, and generous, reach.

Curated by Severin Dünser, Christian Kobald, Emanuel Layr, Andreas Stadler, and Rita Vitorelli, the show presents a range of solace-seeking strategies, from the contemplative to the onanistic. Ernst Caramelle’s sun-faded geometric motifs and Ruth Laskey’s intricately woven, Albers-esque canvases occupy a ruminative plane, while ecstasy and abjection are explored by works like Koudlam’s videos of gyrating background dancers (set to his melancholic sound track) and Piotr Uklański’s print of a false-eyelash-wearing glans, which evokes, with virtuosic perversity, the Bataillean big toe and eye. Solace in oblivion comes in Tom Marioni’s The Act of Drinking Beer with Friends is the Highest Form of Art, 1970–2010, installed in the basement alongside the supersaturated fields in Martha Rosler’s Super 8 Flower Fields (Color Field Painting), 1974.

Yet it is Julien Bismuth’s video of a stand-up comedian tanking in the Forum’s empty concert hall, juxtaposed with Peter Coffin’s hovering balloons in Untitled (Balloon Equilibrium), 2009, that exemplifes the pathos underlying the exhibition: that the greatest reprieve can lie in a little company.