title: Charlotte Gash: Bingeworthy, Five Stars
category: catalogue
published in: Unfreezing the Scene, Kunsthalle Wien Prize 2022
publisher: Kunsthalle Wien
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... Unapologetically, Gash mixes feminist critique with humorous, pulp content and mocks widespread attempts at appearing smarter than one is by hitting certain intellectual markers of class, established largely by white male thinkers of the past century. ‘We both know you haven’t got a clue about them foreign films… your favourite show is still Friends’ quips the intro song to ‘Breeder or Sucker’. In this respect, Gash’s work exhibits an ‘autotheoretical’ quality, one that is ‘personal-theoretical, incidental and gut-centered.’ By integrating philosophy and social criticism with autobiography, autotheory challenges the entrenched ideas of what counts as legitimately critical knowledge. This reading of Gash’s work appears to be reinforced by the appearance of Chris Kraus’ authotheoretical novel ‘I Love Dick’ in a scene from ‘Breeder or Sucker’ (uncoincidentally in the vicinity of an enormous dildo).
The fact that I could ‘binge’ Gash’s work with so much enjoyment gave me a reflective sense of relief. It felt like an invitation to abandon presuppositions about how art should be produced and consumed, embrace its humorous and erotic sides, and, for once, divorce ‘guilty’ from ‘pleasure’.
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