Just over 120 years separate Lustans Lakejer (early 1980s pop band) from Charles Baudelaire. Despite this, we recognise in both a world in which boredom is the neighbour of ecstasy, where everything is transformed to superficiality and where moral values appear to crack. Everything is for sale - at unforseen prices, the changes in fashion do not follow a fixed exchange rate. Decadence is the vicious son of nihilism (yet another black sheep in the family of Modernity) and one of its contemporary expressions is represented by the American artist Richard Hawkins. In his ink-jet print outs - a more superficial and easily manipulated and reproduced medium is hard to imagine - 1960s spy films meet the turn of the century painter Gustave Moreau. Superficial, transient beauty in a depraved world.

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Richard Hawkins Oct. -95