With the advent of search algorithms and AI-driven content generation, even the most remote corners of the imagination can now be visualized. On one hand, this represents a democratic flattening of the image-making process; on the other, it challenges the potency of imagery and the very value of truth. Image reproduction, appropriation, and manipulation have become as natural and constant as breathing. In this context, what does it mean to consume visual information? Is it merely a self-affirming loop of preconceived ideas? Or an endless search for endorphin hits? And what happens when the artist’s contrarian spirit yields to social media likes?

 

The exhibition title “Sensitive Content” refers to the warning overlay applied to algorithm-flagged posts on Instagram, whether for nudity, sexuality, violence, politics, or other forms of contested material. Such subjects have been abundant throughout art history, yet in 2025 there is a perceptible shift toward conservative values. If the internet has flung open the floodgates of free information, demystified the naked body, and granted the masses their fifteen minutes of fame, then what, precisely, is at stake?

 

The exhibition opens with an ambiguous selfie of the artist, taken after an intense sports massage session. The skin appears layered with bruises, as though marked by an agonizing event. Holding a phone and directing the lens outward, the camera eye becomes at once self-reflective and invasive. Serving as the exhibition’s opening statement, the image both welcomes viewers in and interrogates them. In the context of the ubiquitous camera and social media, we are constantly being recorded and recording others. We are living in more than a surveillance state: the camera is at once an instrument of self-defense, a weapon against privacy, and a machine for manufacturing fame.

 

It is a cruel world, where visual impetus trumps reasoning. In one moment, a remote audience can celebrate you, and in the next, tear you apart over nothing. In the words of Warhol: “If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There’s nothing behind it.” This quote captures the temperament of contemporary social media consumption: short attention spans and the bombardment of advertising in every form. We are endlessly engaging in fleeting, superficial fragments of the whole. We are continually judged by how we appear both in real life and online. It is a flattening of existence, where looking good and being good-looking carry more weight than the best of intentions.

 

“It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.” - Oscar Wilde