Aaron Van Dyke's C-Side, Deluxe Edition! at Western Exhibitions turns down the volume of his previous work. Two series and a sculpture made up the show, which contained several common themes but did not convey any one particular thesis.

Seven posters made up the dominant series. These posters, mostly square, contained the markings reminiscent of Van Dyke's past work, but differed in their straight edges. On some posters the marks were clearly black, but others were less clearly defined, implying a digital color-inversion process and confusing the distinction between foreground and background. The works in the new show lacked the same kind of inherent interest as past work. Van Dyke's government documents, advertisements, and covers of LPs from past shows were engaging, young, conversational. It was vandalism and censorship, original and remix, public document written in legalese processed through his own violent interpretation. It was reminiscent of youth-targeted mass marketing or promotion, but more personal.

This C-Side series is inherently dead; the marked papers are littered with hair. Hair almost completely covers some posters—some have clumps, on others the hair is spread evenly and scantly. The hair, itself a symbol of irreclaimable loss, gives the same effect of the lost text, victim to black ink. The hair pasted over black marks disappeared—but this time, what is disappearing is private and bodily. The posters collapse the re-appropriation of the readymade, the chance factor of abstract expressionism, and the physicality of body art.

The play on the body is continued through the truncated obelisk sculpture. The sculpture, made of plaster and wire lattice, has a smooth, minimalist appearance on the outside and a rougher and more industrial inside, challenging the look of process art. Attached to the exterior are photographs and computer printouts of the artist Photoshopping an image of a wig along with a sheet of computer paper that contains more hair. Photographs of Van Dyke constructing the sculpture while wearing several fake beards are also attached to the sculpture, and a longhaired Peter Frampton makes another cameo at this Van Dyke show. This time his photograph has a psychedelic effect, and he is holding a phallic guitar. The masculine theme continues with psychedelic porn and photocopied essays on a men's prison and the Oedipus complex. Photographs of the sculpture, itself, and its construction are posted on its sides. These allusions to Gordon Matta-Clark are cemented by the photograph of Splitting (1973), which is attached to the inside of the sculpture. In this way the construction of the sculpture is the work, making the sculpture like a happening. This theme is echoed in the sculpture's Frampton photo, which takes on a more object-image role than the images in the third series.

Three images make up the third series, all of them based on Peter Frampton. The two end images are monochromes based on the same image of Frampton on the sculpture. The leftmost image is not doctored any more than the image on the sculpture. Like the sculpture's image of Frampton, two toupees are digitally added to his portrait, one on either side of his head. In the rightmost image Frampton has disappeared, painted into the background. The area of middle image where Frampton would presumably be is spray painted over in the same black and white of the posters. The spray paint, though, is digital—Photoshop's spray can. Here the inking out is virtual, but built into the printout. The vandal is a digital artist; a Perez Hilton of the art world.