O-1 Visas
Recordings: Q1 is not fun and does not wish to be. Sascha Huth’s recent exhibition at the SAIC Galleries comprises a trio of artworks that together tackle the deeply human challenge of managing absence, not the kind that makes the heart grow fonder, as the cliché has it, but the other kind, the one that renders time endless, space affectless, and touch lackluster. “1-4938 (Absent Days; 2012-2025)” dramatizes, just barely, the period during which the artist and his biological father were out of contact, an extent that must have been extraordinarily fraught but here reduces to a series of numbers scripted, spoken, and recorded. “Imprint (Bathroom; Chicago)” sensitively casts the artist’s bathtub stall in grey PVC but appears as an abject mess of crumpled sheeting piled on the gallery floor. “Untitled (Trainride)” presents the route from downtown Chicago to Gary on two phone screens, one showing the journey there, the other back. As with everything here, it’s absolutely accurate but also determinedly bleak, practically begging the viewer to look past its restrained factuality to find something—anything—else.
—Lori Waxman 7/24/26 10:55 AM