Robert Storr Curates 'Retinal Hysteria' at Venus Over Manhattan

Robert Storr, art historian, museum curator, artist, and longtime collaborator of artpress, has curated 'Retinal Hysteria' at Venus Over Manhattan in New York, running from November 16, 2023 to January 13, 2024. The exhibition brings together about forty artists to trace the effects of the Trump era and the pandemic on the collective psyche. The gallery approached Storr after reading his introduction to the catalog of 'Eye Infection' at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2001, which Catherine Millet described in artpress as 'the most effective conspiracy against political correctness.' Storr asked artists for 'something irritating, provocative, disorienting,' channeling key components of their psyche into concrete artworks. The show includes works by Robert Crumb, Jim Nutt, Gladys Nilsson, Art Spiegelman, S. Clay Wilson, Jim Shaw, Kara Walker, and Louise Bourgeois, whose 'Triptych for the Red Room' (1994) is featured. Storr emphasizes the exhibition is not about Trump or the pandemic but recognizes their effects on the collective psyche, highlighting the 'tragicomic' state of the world. Kara Walker's fresco treats childbirth as a 'formidable Rabelaisian fart,' a reproductive explosion covering nearly an entire wall. Jim Shaw's 'Large Trump Chaos II' (2017) presents distorted, almost abstract portraits of Trump.