Jota Castro (FR/PE), Graham Dolphin (UK), Sebastian Errazuriz (CL), Rochelle Feinstein (USA), Tom Gallant (UK), S. Mark Gubb (UK), Michael Joo (USA), Patrick Hamilton (CL), William Powhida (USA), Walter Robinson (USA), Guy Richards Smit (USA), Lisa Yuskavage (USA)
These Macedonians are a rude and clownish people that call a spade a spade. – Plutarch
Life is a four-letter word. So is art when pushed past polite boundaries. You don’t have to be Lenny Bruce to know that the first commandment of comedy is ‘leave half the audience laughing and the other half horrified.’ Rude art, like rude words, straightens spines and unbuckles straitened belts. Filth frightens, provokes, angers and just plain disgusts. Sometimes it proves outright liberating. Reason and good sense often blanch when faced with graffiti on the bathroom wall.
Dirty Kunst is a show with Tourette’s. An exhibition of artists committed to what George Orwell called significant ‘mental rebellions,’ it lives and breathes according to the idea that there is no such thing as dirty art, just dirty minds. A rough version of the hippie mandate to ‘speak truth to power,’ the spirit behind this batch of ‘dirty kunst’ is one that seeks out extreme responses. Cruelty, venality, lubriciousness, perversity, black humour, misanthropy – all of these count as genuine paths to artistic expression and – why not – a certain twisted redemption.
About the Curator: Christian Viveros-Fauné is a New York-based writer and curator. He has curated exhibitions at Mexico’s Museum of Modern Art and Chile’s Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende. He is the inaugural critic-in-residence 2010-2011 at The Bronx Museum. He writes the Free-Lance column for ArtReview and criticism for The Village Voice.
Installation View, 2010
Lisa Yuskavage, Untitled, 2010
Oil on board
30x 22 cm
Michael Joo, Yellow, Yellower, Yellowest, 1991
Engraved aluminium shelf, glass beakers, urine, sodium azide, text
50 x 14 x 16 cm
Sebastian Errazuriz, Untitled, 2010
Projector, slide and suitcase
Graham Dolphin, I Feasted this Morning On Scrambled Havoc, 2010
Single channel audio
6 hour
Guy Richards Smit, Grossmalerman’s Studio Visit, 2010
Video
Rochelle Feinstein, Auditorium, 2005
Engraved aluminium plaque
10 x 22 cm
William Powhida, Rant I, 2010
Graphite and coloured pencil on paper
111 x 76 cm