In Jordan Wolfson's video work "Con Leche" (2009), which is on display as NKVextra, hand-drawn animated Diet Coke bottles march, as individuals and in groups, through the picture. They are not filled with Coke, but with milk spilling with every step from the open bottle necks. The background are desolate city views of Detroit. The image wavers and rotates around its own axis on the projection screen.

The video is acoustically accompanied with a professional advertising voice over, reciting incoherent text from the Internet, dealing with subjects such as reincarnation, sexual orientation, a cocaine scandal in the fashion industry, self-defense, smartphones, and recycling. The woman’s voice is interrupted by Jordan Wolfson himself, politely asking to speak faster, slower, louder, quieter or with more sex appeal, which is followed immediately. The duration of the video track of "Con Leche" is about 15 minutes, the soundtrack nearly 23 minutes. The result in the loop are irritating new combinations.

With the adaptation and decontextualisation of pop-cultural strategies Jordan Wolfson also creates a depressing commentary on the social status quo. Banal pseudo-knowledge, junky information and the daily overexposure by the mass media, determine the real life of modern individuals. They are not suitable as sources of intellectual nutrients, as little as Diet Coke. Even if the viewer is, visually speaking, „shaken" by Con Leche, the lurid "I love it" attitude of popular art is progressing inexorably.

 

Jordan Wolfson: Con Leche, 2009 (Video Still)

Jordan Wolfson / Con Leche

15. January 2012 - 06. May 2012

 

Extended to May 6

Opening: Saturday, January 14, 2012, 5 to 8 pm

Curated by Elke Gruhn and Sara Stehr