Dennis Reinmüller @ Summerhall, until 22 Nov

Seinfeld, the TV sitcom based loosely on the ‘real’ lives of its writers is often cited as ‘a show about nothing.’ Dennis J. Reinmüller operates within this same tragic-comic spectrum – where everyday absurdities blossom into something ludicrously sublime. He thrusts his audience into the messy self-reflexive space of overlapping pop-cultural meta-narratives, where Kurt Cobain and Larry David bash heads with Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. This room-sized installation is easy on neither the eye nor the brain (particularly if your knowledge of quantum mechanics isn’t up to scratch). A projection, seemingly sourced from a live camera feed, documents a suited figure with an iconic ‘smiley’ for a head hunched over a baffling gallery hand-out. From the vacuous maw of this lumpen-headed protagonist spews a sheet of lurid green which pools around his shiny business shoes.

The audience can put themselves in this bleak picture; can read alongside to see what might have provoked such a strong reaction. But the artist pointedly denies us a place in the scenario, rendering his audience ghost-like, searching for meaning and for ourselves. Reinmüller captures the condition of placing oneself between two reflective surfaces, mesmerised by the skewed reality of our own reflection (in this case, literally) ad nauseam. A touchscreen which tempts us to tap away for an elusive ‘High score’ like battery hens searching for food pellets is a simple stroke of brilliance. We break the endless cycle of searching for affirmation only when we grudgingly accept our own banal place in this world. Reinmüller has the moxie to turn existential angst into something which is extraordinary, yet defiantly difficult to digest. If we imagine a world without the ‘nothingness’ of the ordinary we would be left with a land populated by Supermen. And Reinmüller isn’t about to let that happen. [Kate Andrews]