l'art pour l'art


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from the curator of "bright stupid confetti"

Transfiguration by Olivier de Sagazan

For more than 20 years, Olivier de Sagazan has developed a hybrid practice that integrates painting, photography, sculpture, and performance. In his existential performative series Transfiguration, which he began in 2001, de Sagazan builds layers of clay and paint onto his own face and body to transform, disfigure and take apart his own figure, revealing an animalistic human who is seeking to break away from the physical world. At once disquieting and deeply moving, this new body of work collapses the boundaries between the physical, intellectual, spiritual and animalistic senses. The artist states: “I am interested in seeing to what degree people think its normal, or even trite, to be alive.” 

excerpt from Body Hair Removal (2008) by Oriana Fox

Humans love hair - on the top of their heads, that is - hair on their bodies, well that’s more complicated. This short documentary takes a close-up look at all aspects of body hair removal for both sexes, revealing the down-low on current trends from manscaping to brazillians. A variety of methods are demonstrated and explained including plucking, shaving, waxing, sugaring, chemical depilation, electrolysis and mechanical epilation.

Voiceover by Alex M. Fox

One Fist - Zackary Drucker

(performance at Jerome Zodo Contemporary, January 21, 2010)

Here is my modest proposal: beyond endless video montages and the cold mannerist obsessionality of the taste for appropriation and reenactment that has become hegemonic in the art world, the heart of any artistic response to the present should perhaps be the cultivation of the monstrous and its concomitant affect, namely disgust. Disgust here can be thought of as the visceral register of a monstrosity that can no longer be excluded from the realm of the aesthetic, as it was for Aristotle and Kant, but should be its arrhythmic heart, its hot and volatile core. It is important to keep in mind the link to aesthetic judgments of taste or gustus, which gives us the “gust” in dis-gust, the ill wind in the soft-flapping sails of revulsion. Dis-gust is an aesthetic judgement of dis-taste.

What I am calling for, then, is a new art of monstrosity which is able to occupy a certain semi-autonomous distance from the circuits of capture and commodification.

— “Absolutely-Too-Much” by Simon Critchley

Édouard Levé - Amérique

In 2002, the French photographer Édouard Levé travelled to the United States to collect material for his photography series Amérique. Limiting his project in chance-procedural fashion, Levé gathered images from American towns and cities that shared their names with other places around the world. For instance, Amérique features photographs taken in Paris, Texas, and Berlin, Pennsylvania, and so on. […] Amérique was Édouard Levé’s final collection of photos. In 2007, the year after its publication, he took his own life at 42. (via Ryan Meehan)

14 DREAMS OF DEATH is a collaboration between Ken Baumann, Blake Butler and M Kitchell—the latest release from the newest season of Solar Luxuriance. Printed in an edition of 125 copies (the largest print run Solar Luxuriance has ever handled), 14 DREAMS OF DEATH is a 56 page book exploring the nightmare terrain of sleep and dogs and houses and cubes and dads.

14 DREAMS OF DEATH is a collaboration between Ken Baumann, Blake Butler and M Kitchell—the latest release from the newest season of Solar Luxuriance. Printed in an edition of 125 copies (the largest print run Solar Luxuriance has ever handled), 14 DREAMS OF DEATH is a 56 page book exploring the nightmare terrain of sleep and dogs and houses and cubes and dads.

THE MURDER BALLAD
created by Poor Dog Group
directed by Jesse Bonnell
performed by Jessica Emmanuel

With a murky mix of desire, jealousy and emancipatory yearning, Poor Dog Group’s latest movement-based work gives forceful physical life to Jelly Roll Morton’s legendary 1938 recording. Originally performed in the brothels of New Orleans’ steamy Storyville district, Morton’s song revels in the nastiness of its heroine’s voice, whose feral physical energy lays claim to the violent impulses of a woman betrayed. The Murder Ballad delves into the myth of female madness and racialized representations of sexuality.