A single, stark line of dashed prose, careless to the untrained eye. Five terse words - “Critiques may not be exhibited”. These are the spaces in which the true stuff of art resides.

Reading Bucky’s proposals is like turning the dial on an old radio. Suddenly there is a voice, a garbled news broadcast, a shrill single tone, a story being told, music, then silence - and an emptiness that expresses more through it’s juxtaposition with sound then mere absence. Bucky’s works are fundamentally expressions of loss, seen here through the striking central metaphor of “critiques” and the right to exhibit that is being stripped away. At heart, what is an artist? Is the drive to critique a part of the human condition, and is the denial of the right to exhibit that critique thus a denial of our own humanity? These are the questions that Bucky challenges us with.

Whenever you think that you know what kind of artist Bucky is, he turns out to be quite another. Since exploding back onto the scene after a long hiatus on 29 SEP 2011 22:01:13 UTC, he has pushed the boundaries of the minimalist style - his “Exhibition of smileys (2011)” and “Proposal: Don’t take my acclaim (2011)” utilised the same terseness as H(n)TGAASEE, although it is only with that most recent work that the gradual refinement of the style has blossomed into full maturity. But taking a long view of his career makes it clear that Bucky’s style is bewildering; many in the past have confidently predicted a settling into comfortable habit, but Bucky has never lost his power to shock. Will he continue to refine the Short Post style, or while his next work be a multi-paragraph opus? It is beyond the power of this reviewer to predict, but I suggest that you consume his short work while you still can. Bucky wipes out the world then reinvents it, over and over, in all its awful complexity, and you never know what world he may chose to reflect next.

This positive review is by JOSH.