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Phenotype Genotype (PhG) 


Summerhall until September 27th 2012
4 stars
There is no more perfect show to illustrate where Summerhall has come 
 from than this vast display of avant-garde detritus culled from the 
even vaster archive of the Edinburgh-based Heart Fine Art set-up. From 
John and Yoko to Gilbert and George to Jake and Dinos Chapman, 
everybody's here in an eminently tactile but tantalisingly untouchable 
display of all the abstract art-stars that made the twentieth century. 
Books, badges, manifestos, pamphlets, calling cards, provocations, an 
inevitable first edition of Guy Debord's 'La Societe du Spectacle', a 
Warhol print and a Fluxus game by George Brecht are all in the frame in 
this gloriously jumbled-up  and refreshingly non-digital display of 
parallel universe memorabilia.

Seen together, it's as obsessive a collection as the artists it gathers 
for a fantasy salon that the Swiss cheese of the original Cabaret 
Voltaire Dadaist boys club in Zurich could only wet-dream of. If seeing 
the words 'KILL THE POP ART!' is contrary given the context, the legend 
'Fuck Joseph Beuys' is just asking for trouble in a cabinet of 
curiosities that presents a crucial alternative art history treasure 
trove. 


The List, August 2012

ends
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