What is normal? Normal is stability, predictability, calm. It is unidirectionality. It is clean and smooth and same. It is cars driving forward, explosions diffused, viruses contained, spills wiped up fast. Sounds great, right? The artist collaborative virocode has been making work since the late 80s that challenges the scientific reality and assumed desirability of normal. Who wouldn’t want a Siamese car? virocode built one that drives street legal. How to resist the beauty of small explosions? virocode took split second photos of their brilliant sparks. Isn’t gushing liquid stunning? virocode built a frozen waterfall of poured acrylic and photographed bursting water balloons. But what of contagious diseases, what of visible growths on the body—surely there is no place in the aesthetic pantheon for them? In the installation “In which nature abhors a vacuum,” virocode embraces these forms of bodily difference, too, banishing fear and welcoming uncertainty in extremis.

—Lori Waxman 11/11/16 10:44 AM