Friday, September 5, 2008

Cromatic Mess Syndrome


The latest addition to my lengthy "St. Sebastian" series recently made the trip to Burning Man as part of the Sarah Cromarty-curated It's a Celebration %?(#&$! . The mixed media sculpture is entitled St. Sebastian Ann Coulter Daniel Radcliffe Mandelbrot Set and is accompanied by the following didactic panel:


When this oedipal directive is followed, the viewer activates the embedded torso of a talking Ann Coulter doll which says things like "Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like Liberals do - they don't have the energy. If they had that much energy they'd have indoor plumbing by now."



The piece is on display at Circus Gallery alongside the rest of the Burning Man veterans in conjunction with Sarah's latest solo exhibit, opening tonight, Friday Sept 5 from 7 - 9. Sarah, one of the GLALAWBs (Gorgeous Lady Alumnus of LA Weekly Biennials), just keeps getting better - I visited her studio a couple of weeks ago and took a few snapshots of the new work.


The funniest thing about Sarah's oeuvre is that she is openly indebted to Peter Doig (to whom the above piece is a direct homage) and Daniel Richter, both considerably overrated painters as far as I'm concerned -- and neither as interesting as Sarah. 



A more compelling referent is Paul Thek, whose seminal Death of a Hippie installation is the subject of another of Cromarty's homages - an update/self-portrait entitled Death of a Raver which will be installed in a closet and lit with 200 glow sticks.


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