Josh Kline’s Conceptual Climate Hysteria

When I first came across the artist Josh Kline’s work, it gripped me. Uncannily realistic human corpse sculptures sealed in body bags like Laura Palmer at the beginning of Twin Peaks were splayed out on the floor, alongside shopping carts and other detritus signifiers of modern waste. The show had a vibe, one that reminded me of Jonah Freeman’s and Justin Lowe’s installations of fictional interiors against theoretical apocalyptic wastelands and the neon-drenched debris pileup installations of the late Jason Rhoades. Moreover, Kline’s insistence on making art with radically new technological tools—3D printing, deep-fake software, and various digital technologies—showed an admirable openness to experimentation.