Tag: Javier Peres
John Kleckner & Patrick Tuttofuoco
Mark Flood
Mark FLOOD: Bitch Moves
“BOY” by SSION
Javier Peres is very pleased to present “BOY”, the first solo exhibition by Cody Critcheloe – SSION (B. Kentucky USA. Lives and work in Kansas City, MO) in Germany. “BOY” brings together nine separately shot but jointly conceived music videos for SSION’s 2007 record Fool’s Gold.
First things first! It’s SSION, pronounced “shun,” as in mission, fission, ambition-all apt words to describe the gesamtkunstwerk that is Cody Critcheloe and the queer punk/performance/art band he invented ten years back as a high school student in Lewisport, Kentucky. In the time since then, SSION has released 4 full-length records, toured extensively through the United States, and enjoyed cult status among fans and music writers who have lauded Critcheloe as everything from Out magazine’s Hottest Artist of the Year to “Prince’s love child” to the “one true master” of “high-concept sleaze pop.” Critcheloe’s songs are catchy, not abstract, and his visuals and live shows are crafted to appeal to more than an art-going crowd. SSION could easily cross over to become a pop phenomenon-a potentiality (or prophecy) which, in a stroke of self-reflexive genius, Critcheloe has already written into the narrative arc of his work to date. The story of SSION is a raucous, louched up, camp parody of Critcheloe’s own life, in which a small-town punk kid hooked on doughnuts and pizza follows his dreams with razor focus to emerge as a svelte, smoky-eyed pop star embraced by adoring crowds. And here, it seems, is the catch. While the annals of art and film give us plenty of examples to draw on for theorizing the artist’s alter ego, the image-obsessed dandy, the high-camp auteur, and the concept band, the discourse is less prescribed for an artist and musician who straddles all of these genres while aspiring to create work that actually is pop in the broadest and most populist sense of the word.
SSION’s first feature-length film, BOY, affords a fresh opportunity to consider the band’s work in the context of popular media and within the discourses of contemporary art. To situate the work this way is to necessarily highlight a degree of fluidity, criticality and complexity in the work that far exceeds the typical coming-of-age movie or arena concert experience.
“illuminating Shadows” Kirstine ROEPSTORFF
Javier Peres is pleased to announced “Illuminating Shadows,” Kirstine Roepstorff’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery, at Peres Projects Berlin.
Kirstine Roepstorff’s works have a way of speaking in big terms, which despite their metaphysicality are vibrantly catalogued and defined in the artist’s practice. She can explore the idea of, say, a shadow, applying this – for lack of a better word – paradigm to everything from cultural, national, or personal awareness, honesty, or even the changing seasons, by employing visual metaphors of everything from rocks, forests, sumo wrestlers, storks, newspaper headlines and nude figures. Roepstorff is an appropriation artist, and she rearranges the images we see to say something about reality. But she also rearranges normal conceptual boundaries, and the complex visual collages we see are reflections of this. She talks about her work in terms of energies, honesty, personal shadows, awareness, weight, balance, gardening, or any number of people and animals who have become modern-day archetypes in her complexly coded visual world – a juggler, Balance, a wolf, the Eel of Unfortune, Moment Man, or The In-Between. Things that are normally incomparable, like advertisements for eyewear and images of lynch mobs, are oddly brought into interrelational comparisons that defy logic – akin to asking which is more, 2+2 or wilderness?
This new series of large-scale sculptures and collages represent a selection of works from the artist’s most recent museum exhibition at the Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck, and Stadtgalerie Schwaz – both in Tyrol, Austria. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalogue. The special exhibition concept was prompted by the artist’s first visit to Tyrol and the Haus der Völker in Schwaz, an ethnological museum based on the private collection of Dr. Gert Chesi. By integrating numerous African artworks from the collection into her exhibition, Roepstorff brought ritual objects into dialogue with her own works, causing these objects to be viewed aesthetically, and her own works to be viewed anthropologically.
At the same time, the strong presence of light and shadow is not insignificant. The sculptural works are in large part translucent, and it is only through illumination that many of the layers of images between two translucent pieces of fabric become visible. A shadow is an interesting phenomenon – both present and absent at the same time. For her exhibition at Peres Projects, Roepstorff has not included the African sculptures, and yet their absence is present. Most importantly, with this body of work she has expanded her large range of consumer-grade materials (paper, fabric, glass, jewelry, tinsel, beads, roots, concrete, etc.) to include light and shadow. Now, for the first showing of the works in Berlin, in a gallery, where the atmosphere has been distilled and the power of the works concentrated, this is a show that synthesizes its own thesis. It is the show that lost its shadow.
Bruce LABRUCE
Javier Peres is pleased to present Bruce LABRUCE’s first solo show with Peres Projects in Berlin. “LA Zombie: The Film That Would Not Die” will consist of new works on canvas and the European sneak peak of LaBruce’s most recent film, LA Zombie, starring Francois Sagat.
Now I remember why I love filmmaking. What other pursuit allows you to experience despair and jubilation all in one day, and twice over? Jason picks me up in his trusty Datsun and we head for the lofts on Wilshire where the production office is. The air-conditioning there is broke and with all the guys staying there with no openable windows it’s getting pretty funky. Because the big car crash scene has been changed to a location in Topanga Canyon to be shot on Sunday night, we have the opportunity to shoot another full day of Francois in various locations in LA both dressed as a homeless person and as an alien zombie. Sometimes disaster can turn into advantage.
We did have an awesome, experienced First A.D. in place, but he dropped out about a week before shooting when he got a paying gig. A lot of the people who have volunteered to work on this project for little or no money are dropping off like flies because they just can’t afford to turn down other work if it becomes available. I suppose it has something to do with the economy. I guess the economic disaster also explains why there are so many more homeless people than I’ve ever seen in LA. Anyway, without a real First A.D., the shoot is pretty chaotic today. Laszlo and I are basically doing it ourselves, which is a little distracting. At least we have walkie-talkies and GTS, which makes transportation and finding locations a lot easier. So we head out this morning with our little convey communicating with ten-four good buddies and copy thats.
The first location has sexy homeless Francois gleaning along a chain link fence down on a street that overlooks downtown. I was inspired to play up the homeless aspect of the character by watching Agnes Varda’s “The Gleaners and I” for the first time recently, a meditation on those who pick up waste and garbage and basically pick clean the bones of society. Actually my last film, Otto; or, Up with Dead People, was also about a homeless zombie, partly inspired by Varda’s movie “Vagabond”. So I guess I’m pretty much stuck on one idea, except this time it’s going to be a full on porno. How do you like them apples…
Cody Critcheloe–SSION “BOY”
Javier Peres is very pleased to present “BOY”, the first Los Angeles solo exhibition by Cody Critcheloe – SSION (B. Kentucky USA. Lives and work in Kansas City, MO). “BOY” brings together nine separately shot but jointly conceived music videos for SSION’s 2007 record Fool’s Gold.
First things first! It’s SSION, pronounced “shun,” as in mission, fission, ambition-all apt words to describe the gesamtkunstwerk that is Cody Critcheloe and the queer punk/performance/art band he invented ten years back as a high school student in Lewisport, Kentucky. In the time since then, SSION has released 4 full-length records, toured extensively through the United States, and enjoyed cult status among fans and music writers who have lauded Critcheloe as everything from Out magazine’s Hottest Artist of the Year to “Prince’s love child” to the “one true master” of “high-concept sleaze pop.” Critcheloe’s songs are catchy, not abstract, and his visuals and live shows are crafted to appeal to more than an art-going crowd. SSION could easily cross over to become a pop phenomenon-a potentiality (or prophecy) which, in a stroke of self-reflexive genius, Critcheloe has already written into the narrative arc of his work to date. The story of SSION is a raucous, louched up, camp parody of Critcheloe’s own life, in which a small-town punk kid hooked on doughnuts and pizza follows his dreams with razor focus to emerge as a svelte, smoky-eyed pop star embraced by adoring crowds. And here, it seems, is the catch. While the annals of art and film give us plenty of examples to draw on for theorizing the artist’s alter ego, the image-obsessed dandy, the high-camp auteur, and the concept band, the discourse is less prescribed for an artist and musician who straddles all of these genres while aspiring to create work that actually is pop in the broadest and most populist sense of the word.
SSION’s first feature-length film, BOY, affords a fresh opportunity to consider the band’s work in the context of popular media and within the discourses of contemporary art. To situate the work this way is to necessarily highlight a degree of fluidity, criticality and complexity in the work that far exceeds the typical coming-of-age movie or arena concert experience.
— Stacy Switzer, Artistic Director, Grand Arts, Kansas City, Mo., 2009