It is really interesting to compare Kessler to Shrager - they interview each other in Virtual normality. The fun differen e between two Instagram artists is that Kessler put images of himself as a motivation and showing his best life - this is totally the embodiment of self-curated image. and his image is that of success, money, fame, living the high life. It continues to be, he doesn’t explore any other aspect of this. It’s this continual thing that has no sexuality exuded - even though he is naked in one of the pictures. I guess these images are the constructed masculine. there is this culture of success, startups, meditation and new age living that he embodies and pokes fun of. Deals with the construction of identity and the insta-famous. The difference between online and real persona. The virtual unreality of online life. The way people get trapped in their online version of self. Using this for monetary or other gain. He’s a motivational coach for the everyman. The embodiment of successful self made selfie taker. The line on his instagram is ‘how to take a selfie’ and he can teach you all of his secrets. If you take a great selfie, you too can be instafamous.
He doesn’t need to get naked or sexy to gain followers. What is the difference between this and Shrager’s account?
Shragers own Instagram - face girl - i don’t even see any difference to peoples regular feed. it doesn’t even really seem to be in gest. There is even comments within her feed on the politics of fb/insta and just nothing special insta moments, unlike Kasslers work which all seems to be entirely staged, curated and hashtag quoted - very contrived, whereas Shragers own insta account seems reasonably less contrived or contrived in the normal amount. Shrager - 49 K followers, Ona artist 3 m followers I don’t know that the Instagram account by itself is saying anything… or is it? So it is a site based on Ona as a pseudonym that Shrager posts sexy photos of herself as ‘Ona’ and links to her snapchat/website etc where you can sign up and purchase her images through joining her club. I don’t really see what the difference is between this and a insta model doing the same thing. Except that she is writing essays about her situation so that it becomes art? What is the difference between her and another insta model with exactly the same process and photos. I guess its like Nauman saying that ‘anything I do in this studio is now art’. Once you say something is art it is now art. I think her viewpoint and situation that she speaks from is really interesting.
