Someone was taking a dump in The John Waters Restrooms at the Baltimore Museum of Art. Was it an art-inspired intestinal emergency or a dedicated tribute to the filmmaker whose major public stink involved Divine sampling some doggy-doo in the filthy finale of Pink Flamingos? Or perhaps, this intrepid museum-goer previously devoured John’s chapter “Act … Continue reading
Recently with our constant free-flowing shit show in American politics, I find myself thinking with surprising frequency: Fuck that shit, I’m going to space. Taken from a prevalent meme featuring a shark flying through the star-lined galaxy, my intergalactic daydreams of escape, star cruising into space never to look back, now have an articulated vision. … Continue reading
A girl in KISS makeup, a hillbilly, a computer nerd, a couple of witches and four Black women walk into a singles’ mixer. Although it reads like the start of a hack joke, Mike Kelley’s sculptural and multichannel video installation Extracurricular Activity Projective Reconstruction #8 (Singles’ Mixer), currently on view at Luhring Augustine’s Bushwick gallery … Continue reading
In an interview with Amelia Abraham in VICE on his amusingly upsetting zine Ninja Turtle Sex Museum, London-based artist James Unsworth explained, “The grotesque usually combines horror and humor that don’t necessarily go together, and so you don’t really know how to process it. I’m interested in those kinds of psychological spaces that are outside … Continue reading
Through her music, as well as her videos, Lana Del Rey defines a distinctive bittersweet nostalgic Americana–an idyllic yet irreversibly corrupted fantasy. Del Rey’s America is a beautiful California landscape marred by the revving of the Hell’s Angel’s engines. Continue reading
Describing his later series Kandors, an extended reflection on Superman’s shrunken birthplace, Mike Kelley explains, “Kandor is a constant reminder of Superman’s lost homeland and functions metaphorically as a symbol of his alienated relationship to the planet where he now resides…Kandor now sits, frozen in time, a perpetual reminder of his inability to escape that … Continue reading
Valentine’s Day is usually filled with such tepid sentiments as “Be Mine,” “Hugs & Kisses” and “I love you.” However, the only Valentine I need this V-Day is to be found in John Waters’ current exhibition Beverly Hills John at Marianne Boesky Gallery. In a three-framed photograph aptly titled Lovesick, two women, who I … Continue reading
Can you imagine anything more patriotic than an illustration of the Forefathers’ signing the Declaration of Independence emblazoned with the word “BARF,”? How about the Statue of Liberty covered with crudely rendered breasts, bush and armpits spewing with waves of stink? Well, I don’t know about you but I’m just about ready to start feverishly singing about those “amber waves of grain.” Continue reading
“My mother is dead. My father is dead. I’m gay. I’d like to be a poet. This is my house,” unsettlingly proclaims artist Jordan Wolfson’s haunting creation, (Female figure), during both the introduction and conclusion of its seven-minute cycle in Wolfson’s solo exhibition at the David Zwirner Gallery. And it certainly is her house now as she conjures … Continue reading
In honor of the Mike Kelley: Looking Forward symposium at MoMA PS1, as well as a perfect way to avoid the Santacon hoards on this snowy day, we wanted to make it easier to read the full series of co-founder Emily Colucci’s “Who Was Mike Kelley: A Genealogy Of Dangerous Blue-Collar Trash Aesthetics.” Performing a … Continue reading