Instances of Crypto-Transgression #3: O'Flaherty's Gallery, by Adam Lehrer

Adam Lehrer unearths the crypto-transgressive potential in artist Jamian Juliano-Villani's dionysian East Village gallery concept

There’s a tragic, or perhaps perverse, tragedy to the hyper politicization of contemporary art and cultural production. Whether it’s the stifling leftist cultural politics and race hysteria of the art world, or even the try-hard “dissident art” that’s coming to define the Dimes Square right (if such a thing can truly be said to exist), one can’t help but get the impression that whatever political line being sold by art these days is made useless by a lingering delusional idealism. The West has likely never been this politicized in terms of its discourse and the way in which we interact socially with the world, but the reality of politics is far more dismal.After years of endless crises that once appeared as if they would inevitably result in some notable change in politics and society, it’s now clear as day that the end result of the Covid scam, the George Floyd grievance spectacle, and ludicrous Western involvement in the war between Russia and Ukraine is a hard as nails reinstatement of Western liberalism as the status quo. Though we likely have not reached the end of history, despite Fukuyama’s declarations to the contrary, it’s getting ever more difficult to imagine political and social alternatives, let alone advocate for them in art or otherwise. Resistance is, if not futile, then depressingly exhausting. Due to this, artistic political resistance has become, let’s face it, pretty fucking annoying.