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Rena Bransten Gallery presents Flop, an exhibition of new photographs and sculptures by John Waters. This new work has been described as "impish, cunning, charming and cheesy" (The Village Voice). These traits combine to create the allure and complexity in his art and film work that have made Waters a cult figure. As l'infant terrible of American film, John Waters is responsible for such camp film classisc as "Hairspray", "Female Trouble", and "Pink Flamingos." As a visual artist, Waters long ago declared "open season" on the vagaries of the film industry - skewering actors, writers, directors, producers, and anyone else who takes him- or herself too seriously. With Flop, Waters takes aim at the "art world" - the collectors, curators, artists and art dealers who, like their peers in film, operate in a rarefied world of illusion, theory, and concept that revolves around a product that is mostly a visual experience.
Flop will include original multimedia art works, including film stills, collages, and doctored images that examine Hollywood hype and lambaste the world of celebrity. The works also address the pressures and obsessions of Waters' own artistic process: photographs of his compulsive and ever-expanding "To Do" lists, a series of blank TV screens symbolizing "Writer's Block", and a needlepoint throw-pillow with every filmmaker's worst fear - "FLOP" - in large black letters on a bile green cover.
While Waters prefers that his film and fine art careers be considered separately, there is a great deal of overlap. Since many of his art pieces are manipulated photographs, mostly shot from his TV screen, he can use the format of one industry to poke fun at the other. There are barbs directed at "the art world" in his films, and hilarious parodies of film genres in his art - he may even take aim at characters from his own films. Nothing is sacred to Waters, certainly not the cult of celebrity where even an homage can deliver a lethal punch. Prints extolling stars and scenes from the mega-hit "Titanic" are defaced by dust and hairs added by Waters to spoof the hysteria that such costly carelessness (known as "hair in the gate") would cause a Hollywood executive.
Last year, Rena Bransten Gallery presented the first ever San Francisco exhibition by Waters in a show entitled Straight to Video. John Waters' artworks have been exhibitied in New York, London, Milan, Vienna, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and New Orleans. He had a solo show at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 1999, and was included in exhibitions at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Contemporary Art Center in Cincinnati. He has a new book, John Waters Change of Life, which will accompany an exhibition of his work at the New Museum in New York in 2004.
Click here for John Waters' biography.
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