the asinine things I’ve done (2020)
Image, behaviour, oblivious, obvious, understated originality vs unoriginality, hackneyed truth, water is wet, thesaurus, pedantic, “Being a liquid, water is not itself wet, but can make other solid materials wet.” Conceit, cold one, fuck you, doubt, pride in that one thing five years ago, jealousy because they are getting it now, there is time, tomorrow, not sure if obscure or just ignorant, entire argument built off assumption, “I just feel…” the status quo isn’t wrong, antiestablishment rhetoric is fashion and so is your personality, wear plain clothing with no logos to to prove you have no vanity, what does a hard reset of society look like? paradox, I’m not wrong they are, I’m probably very wrong, one more couldn’t hurt, I only use big words to sound smart, virtue signal, smoke signal, buzzword, respect authority, ignore the law, patronize those who are less cultured, never show weakness, agree to disagree, have never lied only never revealed the truth, only read the headline, never go out.
the asinine things we’ve done
the asinine things we’ve done is a collection of work which attempts to acknowledge and reduce self-loathing and ego within self. Through various forms and materials, Simon Hauck considers the personal to express the communal: substance abuse, angst, ego, and doubt. In the process of creating his own personal catharsis, the work holds unfinished potential to allow interpretation beyond the artist’s experience, as to create a bond through commonality of experience. Though the work holds no obvious autobiographical elements, each piece was created from various moments or feelings associated with self-loathing. A space suit, originally conceived as something other, came to the realization of being an individual existing within a state of self-imposed alienation. The skin of a lion with faux stone hand offering a drink represents the artist’s realization of his substance abuse. DIY barriers, signage, and comic panel, each piece separately aspires to represent small fractions of behaviour. Hauck’s desire in this show is not to have the viewer resonate specifically with the content of each work, but to instead recognize that everyone contains destructive behaviours, both to self and social. In a time that is so easy to be cynical, it is important to take a moment to recognize one’s actions and the effect they may have.
By titling the work the asinine things we’ve done, Hauck implicates the viewer by calling out their moments of embarrassment. The times you’ve over compensated to stand out among your peers, stating something passionately as fact only to be immediately proven wrong, or any gesture that keeps you awake at night thinking to yourself, “Why did I do that?” It is not the work itself which implicates the viewer, but instead the title that reminds the viewer of their own experiences which they compare with the work. As individuals within a community, how does one perceive themselves within it, and how are they really? To what degree should one’s past hang upon an individual and what can a person do to rectify a mistake, from the innocent to heinous. the asinine things we’ve done is an acknowledgment and acceptance of one’s embarrassing history to more clearly exist in the present.
