Panel Talk
Art and Meaning in the Contemporary Age
Matt Copson with Dean Kissick and Kids

Are we at the end of history? Is it the end of the world? Or are we old and jaded?
Matt Copson invites a group of children and the critic Dean Kissick for a panel talk to discuss the future of art and meaning. Together they try and tackle the aesthetic-political crises of our times.

Dean Kissick is a writer. He has published cultural criticism in Harper’s, the New York Times Magazine and the Drift, and short fiction in Heavy Traffic and Civilization. He is a contributing editor of Spike Art Magazine, for which he wrote the monthly column “The Downward Spiral” from 2017 to 2022. Since 2024, he has been a director of EARTH, a space in New York and Los Angeles for alternative cultural events. He lives in London.

Matt Copson (b. 1992, Oxford, UK) lives and works in London. His recent solo exhibitions include Restaurant Satyr, High Art, Arles; Age of Coming, Lodovico Corsini, Brussels; Coming of Age, High Art, Paris; Down Boy, Reena Spaulings, New York; On Site, Swiss Institute, New York; Transcend and Die, Mönchehaus Museum, Goslar; and Blorange, Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris. His opera Last Days (written and directed by Matt Copson, composed by Oliver Leith) premiered at the Royal Opera House, London, in 2022 and had its U.S. premiere at the Walt Disney Concert Hall with the LA Phil in 2024.