When watching a video by artist Ed Atkins, one cannot help but feel self-conscious. His CGI stock characters trigger immediate secondhand embarrassment with their constant stream of poetry, apologies, sappy songs, and other forms of self-mutilation. Like a reality TV show character trapped in an endless confessional, Atkins’s bodied creations don’t mind spilling their guts to the camera. Saying all the things one might never admit aloud, these digital figures are able to act more human than most.An ugly but undeniable mirror, Atkins’s videos have quickly assimilated into the contemporary canon. The Tate Britain hosted the London-based artist’s first solo museum show in 2011. The curators presciently titled it “Art Now: Ed Atkins.” By the end of 2015, MoMA PS1, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Stedelijk Museum had all hosted sizable solo presentations. This spring, the 34-year-old debuted “Safe Conduct” at the Statens Museum for Kunst in Denmark. The three-channel video parodied TSA procedures with pineapples and body parts played on a knot of monitors that dropped from the ceiling like screens at a stadium.Last weekend, the same triad hung from a steel beam at the inauguration of Gavin Brown’s Enterprise’s Harlem compound. Even in the crush of opening day celebrations, Atkins’s videos still caused people to gawk. The current favorites, “Ribbons,” “Safe Conduct,” and “Hisser,” all make appearances. Like a mini-retrospective of the past three years, the exhibition is as generous as a proper museum show, giving Atkins’s Eugene O’Neill worthy cast the necessary space to stew.“Hisser” serves as the introduction to the show. It starts with a man walking naked through the snow — a first glimpse into Atkins’s cheekily grim world. The man is muttering, apologizing. Bruised across the face, he resembles a Gregory Crewdson subject, but rather than Crewdson’s signature dumbfounded expression, the man appears to be on the brink of tears. With these simple but emotionally engaged images, Atkins manages to be simultaneously tender and grotesque. After moving past infinite bouncing heads and looping security belts, the narrative begins to fold back on itself, leading one straight back to the source. This messy collapse between creator and creation brings to mind the self-loathing bluster of John Self, the anti-protagonist of Martin Amis’s self-reflexive novel “Money: A Suicide Note.” Whether or not the artist identifies with his characters as much as Amis does with Self is up for debate, but it is Atkins’s voice that comes out of their computer-generated mouths.Understuffed rather than overstuffed, the exhibition does a good job of highlighting Atkins’s recent achievements as well as the potential of the yet-to-be-completed space. Those new to the artist’s work will leave with an intimate understanding of the rising star, while diehard fans will inevitably leave wanting more. If “Performance Capture,” Atkins’s recent show at the Kitchen, is anything to go on, the future looks just as deliciously dark.
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