At some point in college—or maybe grad school, I sought out Peter Hujar’s only published photobook Portraits in Life and Death at New York University’s Bobst Library. I wanted to pour over black and white photographs of filth elders like a pensive portrait of Divine, sans wig and forehead-reaching liquid eyeliner, curled up in a … Continue reading
“Florida is beyond the earthly; it’s spiritual,” comedian Tim Dillon reflected in a recent Patreon episode. “You cannot get rid of the idea of Florida.” He’s right. Florida is a place, sure, but even more so, it’s an idea. Many ideas, really: alligators lounging on golf courses; palm trees swaying in the beach breezes; Tennessee … Continue reading
Fluffy white clouds slowly roll by as a yellow balloon floats up to the heavens, cutting off two giant (by comparison) butterflies that zip around the golden-hour skies. Below, a flower-filled field, barricaded by a wholesome white picket fence, sits abandoned, seemingly post-picnic with a gingham blanket and a garden hose trickling into the whirlpool … Continue reading
“Before you go in,” a tired-eyed older security guard stopped me at the entrance of the black tortoise-shaped screening room for Nan Goldin’s new slideshow Stendhal Syndrome, part of her current exhibition, You never did anything wrong, at Gagosian, “you have to put one of these on your phone camera.” These being, as the guard shuffled … Continue reading
“What has been used on one side is lost on the other side. There’s no going back,” lectures a stern voice at the other end of the telephone after Demi Moore’s frantic has-been actress turned Suzanne Somers’-like exercise guru Elisabeth Sparkle calls customer service to whine about a hitch in her new, ill-advised foray into … Continue reading
So many galleries, so little time. The reviews that actually make it onto this website, dearest Filthy Dreams readers, are only an itsy fraction of the excruciating, shoulder-popping exertion of heaving open countless, heavy-ass gallery doors. Don’t you wish you could come with us on these art excursions? Well, wish no longer! Swanson Kuball gallerist … Continue reading
On a warm Thursday evening, I entered a darkened bathroom stall, got on my knees, and licked. An ice cream cone, you sicko! What did you think I was eagerly lapping up?! Genuflecting devotionally in front of an oversized duct tape-encircled hole like I was praying to the spirits of toilet love past, I finally … Continue reading
Artist Abigail Goldman makes adorable atrocities. How else to describe her minute murder scenes, her terror-ariums, or, as she calls them, die-o-ramas? The first work encountered in her current exhibition State of Nature at Hashimoto Contemporary features a redheaded woman held at automatic gunpoint in a shipping container, which lies stacked next to two others … Continue reading
Most of the insults you might hurl at Jutta Koether’s paintings — sloppy, crude, unresolved — also constitute flattery. Her rough-hewn energy is never more apparent than in her early creations, often featuring garish figures rendered in smeared and crusty oils. In her current summer show at Galerie Buchholz, imaginatively titled 1982, 1983, 1984, we … Continue reading
A mother who carefully renders her grade school-aged son in detailed gouache, focusing on his tousled brown hair, red shirt, and pointy vampire teeth as if he’s sucking the life out of her. An adult son who makes multiple paintings of a stick figure-like shadow outlined in sickening yellows, coagulated blood reds, and burnt oranges, … Continue reading