WASHINGTON, DC.- VON AMMON opened Thy Flesh Consumed, a solo show by Tony Hope. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery, and the final installment of a trilogy, preceded by An End to Sleep (Part 1, Winter 2021) and Home Sweet Home (Part 2, Winter 2023). A monographic publication will be included in a boxed set, to be released early Spring 2026.
Thy Flesh Consumed takes the form of a model living room. These mises-en-scène are helpful to sell decor by creating a projection of an idealized family common space, with the hearth as the focal point and psychological center. These models, which might be found in department stores, home and garden magazines, and in the sales offices of rental buildings, also embody the contours and colorways of the likely-consumer’s psyche, and seek to counteract their anxieties and revulsions, as a foil to the challenges, annoyances and disappointments of life outside of home.
The last decade or so has seen this genre of consumer-facing interior design made pallid and ashen: the spectral bandwidth of domestic desire has been narrowed to a charnel-house key of grays, creams and beiges. This wan palette choice fosters a refuge for the internet-subject, the majority of his or her waking life spent in the color-logged hyperstimulus of computer or phone screens. Or, perhaps, it exists because of the fatigue of relentless achievement culture, which leaves no room for any representations of self in the domestic sphere, as the branded self must contain all associated content within itself: as such, the living room must be inert and lifeless, and harbor no visual obstacles to the production of causa sui media products. The retreat to these sepulchral tones could also be the result of a society terrified of obsolescence, which technology tends to do. By draining spaces and things of their color-mana, they become less likely to fall out of style.
This model living space has all the trappings for Christmas, the holiday season of this exhibition. Denuded of the typical holly reds and greens and cozy trimmings, the Christmas tree and gift wrap are tastefully neutral. A flat screen television displays the Yule Log video loop, flickering odorlessly. What other site of modern life has this recessive, agreeable color story? One might imagine disaster aftermath, where concrete dust coats brighter, more dated hues. Hope’s exhibitions employ the stagecraft of horror movies (his career prior to showing in galleries), so of course there are monsters and dead bodies everywhere. Like the greatest tropes of sci-fi horror, the creatures have breached this manmade, millennial-gray redoubt.
VON AMMON is the only gallery in Washington that would ever install a show like this, and the only gallery to open a project so recklessly close to Christmas. Thy Flesh Consumed will be on view through the holidays and the month of January. Gallery hours are 12-6pm, Friday thru Sunday. Email info@vonammon.net for more information.
