COVID-19
Ah, the sausage. Fodder for such luminaries of art history as Dieter Roth, Paul McCarthy, Ed Ruscha—and now Patrick Wilkins. In Indiscriminate Sincerity, his ingeniously titled solo show at the Ukrainian Village apartment gallery Extase (seriously, “indiscriminate sincerity” ought to become a phrase in regular circulation), Wilkins presents oversize cartoonish paintings rendered with unsettling care, creepy ceramic hot dog figurines, and worrisome little paint-lid doodles. Unlike his artistic predecessors, Wilkins does not literally use foodstuff to make art, rather he proceeds like the Whole Foods butcher he once was, mincing and seasoning all sorts of meaty scraps into tasty individual packages the origins of which it would be best not to examine too closely. Appetites might be lost in noticing the combination of creepy clowns, wiener stand icons, decorative wallpaper, Viennese masquerade, classic animation, and, naturally, rampant phallicism. Chicago Red Hot with all the fixings, anyone?
—Lori Waxman