Erin Shafkind has curated what may be my favorite show of the year so far. Of course, my judgment is clouded by anticipation and the fact that I'm contributing a piece to the show, but there's no denying the compulsive splendor of cacophonous neon lights and roller-skate-glam that also underscores dialogue about utopia and the artistic process. I've previewed a few of the works in person: Troy Gua's ethereal, prismatic portrait of Olivia Newton-John as Kira is breathtaking; I can't wait to see Klara Glosova's crumpled clay skates or the Alpert/Arkley video.
My piece is a drawing called Glory, Utopia (the head of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the body of Terpischore). In a world where there's nothing new under the sun, this may be the world's first ever six foot tall scratch 'n sniff drawing of a hermaphrodite. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The Prime Minister of Poland died in a plane crash the week I began working on this piece. I'd intended to approach the subject of Xanadu with something of an ubuesque, dystopian eye, so when news of the smoldering Prime Minister of Poland (that is to say, Nowhere) arrived, I felt I was perhaps not on the wrong track. This Rubenesque hermaphroditic unicorn is at its worst/best an Ecclesiastical vanitas, at its best/worst the incarnation of a nonsense-spewing hydrocephalic baboon, bubbling over with genital excess and blue areola. In far darker times (Foucault suggests in his preface to Herculine Barbin) real hermaphrodites were summarily executed for their duplicitous, shifting identities, grotesque sexualities, and ineffectual reproductive organs. The blue-nippled fantasies of societies and artists alike are less frequently executed, but perhaps as consistently ineffectual at producing mature, virile fruit (having short vaginal cul-de-sacs that lead to Nowhere).
My piece is a drawing called Glory, Utopia (the head of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the body of Terpischore). In a world where there's nothing new under the sun, this may be the world's first ever six foot tall scratch 'n sniff drawing of a hermaphrodite. Correct me if I'm wrong.
The Prime Minister of Poland died in a plane crash the week I began working on this piece. I'd intended to approach the subject of Xanadu with something of an ubuesque, dystopian eye, so when news of the smoldering Prime Minister of Poland (that is to say, Nowhere) arrived, I felt I was perhaps not on the wrong track. This Rubenesque hermaphroditic unicorn is at its worst/best an Ecclesiastical vanitas, at its best/worst the incarnation of a nonsense-spewing hydrocephalic baboon, bubbling over with genital excess and blue areola. In far darker times (Foucault suggests in his preface to Herculine Barbin) real hermaphrodites were summarily executed for their duplicitous, shifting identities, grotesque sexualities, and ineffectual reproductive organs. The blue-nippled fantasies of societies and artists alike are less frequently executed, but perhaps as consistently ineffectual at producing mature, virile fruit (having short vaginal cul-de-sacs that lead to Nowhere).
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