Reviews of Installation Art Created by My Ex-Girlfriends

Not a Day Goes By That I Don’t Think About Alana Post: Selected Moments From Her Epic Life by Tupela Mornbottom

In a creative debut hailed by critics as “The most aggressively sad thing to ever sit in a room since John Freeman interviewed Tony Hancock,” Tupela Mornbottom’s piece–an enormous collection of miniatures covering 600 square feet–is obsessive, yes, but its degree of accuracy must not be discounted. In one scene, a tiny figure (presumably Alana) hoists an enormous and enraged kraken over her head, preparing to hurl it into the House of Commons. In another, a Tupela-esque mechanical doll is positioned at a tiny computer showing a minuscule reproduction of Alana’s Twitter page, quite literally glued to the screen, its arm thrashing up and down wildly on the microscopic F5 key. Behind a cellophane window, a similarly mechanized Alana is texting in an update as she rides an amphibious rescue narwhal into what could only be Darfur’s most notorious kitten prison. The installation follows no clear narrative, though, which mirrors her inability to, oh, I don’t know–make a decision about where to eat dinner, for once? Have an opinion about what movie to rent?

post-bestimmung by Anna Schwitters

For Schwitters, post-bestimmung is an exploration of the hushed, private language at the intimate border between meaning and non-meaning. The piece, which began as an atmospheric ’sound painting’, invites the observer to lie atop pillows resembling Alana Post’s notoriously banging stems while wearing headphones, over which plays a layered minimal audio track composed entirely of Alana’s sleeping breaths. “It creates the unshakable sensation,” writes art critic Adolf Wölfli, “that one is floating aloft the holy wing-beats of God’s most perfect angels.” Prefiguring the minimalistic indie (or ‘mindie’) movement, Schwitters’ opus has barely begun to realize the peak of its impact.

Unendurable Tempest by Bronhilde Breasthaver

In this video/sculpture installation, a projection of Alana Post drunkenly singing ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ plays onto a very literal depiction of the artist, crafted in intricately hand-tooled leather like some repugnant sexual grimoire, experiencing the most ecstasy a human being can withstand. When the line, “Musha ring dumma do damma da” loops, the mannequin splits in half and a heart-shaped piece of barley extends, pathetically, only to be immediately snapped back inside the dead hide of its encasement. So, what can one say about Unendurable Tempest? Only that it is extraordinarily discomfiting to witness someone’s complete artistic meltdown, knowing that such anguish was produced by a single drunken hookup. And that, much like that night, it is a forgettable work that one is happy to black out of their memories forever.