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I’ve never been ghosted by a work of art before, but I guess there is a first time for everything On entering Martine Syms’s new solo exhibition at Sadie Coles, I am confronted by Mythiccbeing (2018), an enormous video installation comprised of hundreds of miniscule LEDs Intermittently, a phone number comes up on a screen with the words ‘text me’ and I’m promised that if I interact, this work will respond When people refer to a piece of art communicating with the audience it isn’t usually meant in the most literal sense, and in my case at least, I’m left clutching my phone anxiously waiting for a text back to: ‘Hi bbz… How are you? What are you thinking about RN? Hellooooooo’ As the message bubbles gently shift from blue to green I feel an involuntary sense of dread – it appears even a chat bot can crush your self-esteem   This could easily be a Machiavellian trick designed to compound the overarching sense of social anxiety that fills the gallery Mythiccbeing is undoubtedly the focus, featuring a complex three-dimensional rendering of Syms’s face which appears to be imbued with her own physical characteristics: a brief sigh, a gentle move of the lips or a slight turn of the head This vision is interspersed with a montage of mundane video clips, random blocks of text and found imagery, all of which coincide with Syms’s enigmatic voiceover She reels off seemingly inconsequential and classically millennial thoughts around sex, money and everyday drama, all conveyed in the kind of language you would share with your friends in a group chat, as well as trance-like sexual interrogations: ‘Girl you like that? Girl you like that?’   These rapid switchbacks between hyper-erotic speech and trivial chat perfectly mimic the splintered communication most of us engage with every day through an onslaught of texts, DMs, emails and phone calls Combined with Syms’s own image, it’s as if you are getting inside her head at that exact moment when it feels like the brain can’t take it anymore, and the notion of a ‘digital detox’ promises sweet relief   Mythiccbeing, is