CV122 - Ken Lum, Death and Furniture — Earl Miller
Ciel variable 122 - Night Rounds (Winter 2023)
Exhibitions (Individual article, digital version)
Ken Lum, Death and Furniture
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
25.06.2022 — 02.01.2023
— Earl Miller
Ken Lum, a portraitist inhabited by the words and themes of identity and labour, was granted a retrospective, titled Death and Furniture in reference to debates about realism and relativism. “The existence of death and furniture (or other concrete objects) forms a base argument against relativism by raising their inevitability and ubiquity as evidence of the non-debatable real,” writes Earl Miller. Works involving fictional obituaries and used couches sat near two series that did not deal with death but “imbu[ed] reality with relativism.” Miller lingers on this point, raising Lum’s propensity to exalt ordinary situations. These realities, “like death and furniture, are subject to personal (relativist) interpretation and deconstruction.”
Details
Language : English & French
Digital Version : PDF, 1.1 Mb
Bibliographical Notice
Earl Miller, “Ken Lum, Death and Furniture” in Ciel variable, No. 122, “Night Rounds”, Montreal, 2023, p. 86-87.