Music

Patrick Bateman, Pop Critic
by Rob Horning
Still from  American Psycho, 2000 Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman with Huey Lewis and The New's album Fore!  

"Patrick Bateman doesn’t get much credit as a music critic. Maybe that’s because he is a fictional character in Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 novel American Psycho, which prominently features his detailed accounts of murdering people. But amid the chapters about facial regimens, returning videotapes, and dismembering prostitutes are three revealing essays on the careers of some of the biggest 1980s adult contemporary stars..."

 

– This text appears in Spike Art Quarterly #57. You can buy it in our online shop –

Discourse
Madonna in  Dangerous Game  (1993)

Madonna in Dangerous Game (1993)

Out of State

From cult classic to Cannes, Abel Ferrara is the uncancellable auteur par excellence. Natasha Stagg settles in with the popcorn to muse on his silver-screen retrospective.

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Tolia Astakhishvli and James Richards,  Tenant (Dream Catcher ) , 2021

Tolia Astakhishvli and James Richards, Tenant (Dream Catcher), 2021

“The Displacement Effect” at Capitain Petzel, Berlin

A group show at Capitain Petzel is full of subtle interventions that throw our perspective off-kilter, marrying modernist design – rigorous, linear, and in control; not unlike the white cube itself – with playful nods to incongruity.

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Keti Koti parade at Sonsbeek 2021.  ©  Django van Ardenne

Keti Koti parade at Sonsbeek 2021. © Django van Ardenne

 

Sonsbeek 20→24: Force Times Distance

Listen up! That's the sound of resistance. Eva Scharrer visits Sonsbeek, where the weight of history echoes and resonates across Arnheim and beyond in an expansive exhibition.

Discourse

Out of State

In unseasonably California (home of Joan Didion and serial killers galore), Natasha Stagg considers the perils of America's increasingly confusing corona-culture. 

Things we like
Toshiki in the studio.

Toshiki in the studio.

Carry On

Spike sat down with Japanese designer Toshiki to talk about the TOSHIKI x SPIKE Tote Bag collab, sustainability, and how totes are like dating apps. 

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Betty Tomkins,  She is… , 2018,  Just a Pretty Face,  2019,  Women Don't Have Killer Instinct , 2019. Courtesy of the artist, P·P·O·W, New York and rodolphe janssen, Brussels. © Betty Tompkins

Betty Tomkins, She is…, 2018, Just a Pretty Face, 2019, Women Don't Have Killer Instinct, 2019. Courtesy of the artist, P·P·O·W, New York and rodolphe janssen, Brussels. © Betty Tompkins

Pussy Shock

Fifty years after they broke onto the scene with their bold representations of female pleasure, two American feminist pioneers, Betty Tompkins and Marilyn Minter, are finally honoured with their first solo shows in France. 

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Yuri Pattison, "the engine", The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Photo by Louis Haugh.  

Yuri Pattison, "the engine", The Douglas Hyde Gallery. Photo by Louis Haugh.

 

Yuri Pattison at Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin

Killing time – it's not just a turn of phrase. The connection between state power, military force, and the measurement of time and space is more literal than we'd like to believe, observes Irish artist Yuri Pattison in his most recent show.

Discourse

A yoga class in the Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit in New York.

Out of State

As cinemas reopen and "immersive" art experiences flood New York with their competing ads, Natasha Stagg wonders if we've lost the plot. Is reality still our north star, or has it been eclipsed by a collective fiction?

Things we like
Bottega Veneta Issue 02. Cover by Patricia Doria.

Bottega Veneta Issue 02. Cover by Patricia Doria.

Issued for Approval

Ditching social media, Bottega Veneta goes rogue with a multimedia journal – a space for creative expression unbound by the pressures of the algorithmic feed.

Discourse

Paul Gauguin, Martinique Landscape, 1887

The Downward Spiral: Leave Society

Dean Kissick returns from his summer hiatus (ascetic, solitary research, perhaps?), restored and brimming with renewed hope. Eat vegetables, get Tao Lin-pilled, and revel in the beauty of the universe: the modern-day equivalent of "turn on, tune in, drop out"? 

Discourse
Beau Brummell Social Club. Tucson, Arizona.

Beau Brummell Social Club. Tucson, Arizona.

Out of State

These days, you can monetize anything, or so the Internet has us believe. Natasha Stagg has a secret talent that might be profitable, if only she would stop giving it away for free.

"My works are the most sincere and tragic things I have done in life"

"If I tell you I have to kill you with my laser vision"