• Vol. 08
  • Chapter 12
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Art or Otherwise

This is bullshit, she says, in the main hall of the new exhibition they got invited to because they knew someone who knew someone who knew the artist and they thought why not, what could be bad with some art on a Saturday night?
It’s completely empty and meaningless, she says, and he says: The main purpose of art is to make you feel something—but all she feels is that someone wasted a lot of time and money for nothing.
It’s all empty. All it says is that the person who made this is rich and has no good ideas of what anything means in life, art or otherwise.
So she says, Isn’t the purpose of art to connect, to share something with other people, to bring that which is inside you on the surface so others can see a part of what you see, feel, and think?
What does this artist see, feel, and think? A grant and a line in her resume that she can trade for more grants. It’s meaningless.
Well, contemporary art is not for everyone, he says, but she's not listening. She's now all the way across the hall in a corner, away from the main exhibit, staring at a small installation of keys hanging from the ceiling, arranged in a way that they catch the light just right. As if they belong there but also simultaneously exist somewhere else entirely.
Now isn't that something, she thinks.

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