“A radically restricted camera was fixed on half of a neon sign in Ben Russell’s Trypps #5 (Dubai) (2008), which displayed the letters “APP” and only half of a “Y” in an erratic, discontinuous pulse. If the mention of Dubai conjures a cosmopolitan skyline, Russell renounces the possibility of seeing even a single street. As Mark McElhatten writes in the program notes, “Happiness is always, incomplete,” and here, in a critique that Debord may have particularly appreciated, it’s a brightly colored sign for a shop that promises everything but sells nothing.”
–Genevie Yu, Reverse Shot