ARTIST DISPLAYS OWN MORTALITY, AUDIENCE JUST WISHES THEY WERE DEAD INSTEAD
An avant-garde artist has once again proven that the best way to secure government funding is to traumatize the public with digital spiders and falling tuna fish, all while pretending it’s a profound meditation on human existence.
VISITORS REPORT “PROFOUND CONFUSION, MILD NAUSEA”
Ed Atkins’ new exhibition at Tate Britain has critics raving and normal people wondering if they’ve accidentally wandered into the fever dream of a tech bro who just discovered mushrooms for the first time. The installation features the artist’s CGI avatar being swallowed by a sinkhole along with his f@#king IKEA furniture, which art experts insist is a “powerful metaphor” and not just “some weird sh!t a guy made on his computer.”
“What Atkins has created here is a post-digital exploration of existential dread through the lens of consumer capitalism,” explained Dr. Pretentia Wankerton, author of “Why Your Child’s Finger Painting Isn’t Art But This Digital Spider-Man Is.” “The falling tuna clearly represents humanity’s relationship with climate change, or possibly his lunch. It’s deliberately ambiguous.”
DEATH, IKEA, AND DIGITAL SPIDERS: THE UNHOLY TRINITY
The exhibition bombards visitors with an absurd quantity of falling objects, including books, stepladders, and several large tuna fish, which sources confirm is exactly what Nietzsche warned us about. A voice ominously declaring “My proper name is death” echoes throughout the gallery, as if the existential crisis of seeing an artist drawn as half-man, half-spider wasn’t enough of a buzzkill.
Local visitor Terry Normalperson, 43, commented, “I came here thinking I’d see some nice landscapes or something. Instead, I watched a digital man get swallowed by a sinkhole while household objects rained from the sky. Honestly, it’s still better than assembling IKEA furniture myself.”
GOVERNMENT SPENDS £1.8 MILLION ON DIGITAL TUNA, CUTS HOSPITAL FUNDING
The Tate exhibition, funded by an estimated £1.8 million in public arts grants, comes at a time when the National Health Service is facing critical shortages. When questioned about this allocation of resources, Culture Minister Bartholomew Funding-Cutter responded, “Well, hospitals only save lives. This exhibition makes you question what life even is, which is much more important, obviously.”
Industry insiders reveal that 97.3% of visitors pretend to understand the exhibition, while secretly wondering if they can still make it to the gift shop before closing time. The remaining 2.7% are genuinely moved, though this group consists entirely of art students who haven’t slept in three days.
EXPERTS WARN OF SIDE EFFECTS
“Exposure to this level of pretentious digital art may cause symptoms including eye-rolling, excessive sighing, and the sudden urge to tell everyone art was better in the old days,” warned Dr. Ima Philistine of the Institute for People Who Just Want to See a Nice Painting of a Horse.
The exhibition climaxes with visitors exiting through a gift shop where they can purchase £45 tote bags featuring Atkins’ spider-self-portrait, allowing patrons to carry their existential dread with them long after they’ve left the gallery.
At press time, sources confirmed Atkins was already working on his next project: a seven-hour video installation of his avatar slowly assembling an IKEA POÄNG chair while whispering the complete works of Kafka, which has already been shortlisted for the Turner Prize despite not existing yet.
