FORENSICS E (BAD BOYS) (2010)
a solo performance installation
Forensics E (bad boys) is part of an ongoing discussion about masculinity, movement, orientation, and labor. Here is a summary of this conversation:
As a response to Jackson Pollock (whether intentional or otherwise), Paul McCarthy makes Face Painting—Floor, White Line (1972), a document of an action in which the artist pushes himself along the floor while painting a white line with his face and body. Unlike Pollock, who lords above the horizontal canvas while he works, McCarthy is facedown, the pathetic, wormlike counterpart to Pollock’s vigorous, masculine (and stubbornly vertical) body.
As a response to McCarthy (whether intentional or otherwise), Franko B reclaims Pollock’s vertical orientation. Unlike Pollock, he paints with his own blood, which leaks out of his open veins as he walks slowly, naked, down a white runway (I Miss You! (2003/2007)).
As a response to the premier of the shockumentary Mondo Cane (1962)—which features a soft-core re-enactment of Klein’s Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1960)—the artist sees red. He has several heart attacks and dies three weeks later.
As a response to the artist Richard Prince, who was commissioned by W Magazine to photograph Kate Moss dressed as a naughty nurse, a furious reader writes, “A REAL NURSE would not even dream of wearing pleather or patent leather, as we would sweat ferociously with all the hard work we do.” Christie’s auction house describes Prince’s painting Lake Resort Nurse as “unit[ing] two gender stereotypes in an unlikely marriage: the macho Abstract Expressionist and the sexy nurse.”
As a response to Pollock and other abstract expressionists, Klein denies any association with the labor of action painting on the grounds that he is “completely detached from all physical work during the time of creation.”
Forensics E (bad boys) enters sideways into this conversation as two months of research, five weeks of half-assed adolescent patricide, and sixty minutes of failed action.
This piece was performed in the Union Art Gallery at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee as part of the Kate Brandt Pink group show. Kate Brandt, a video and performance artist as well as one of my former students, asked all participants to use her signature color in some way.
As a response to Jackson Pollock (whether intentional or otherwise), Paul McCarthy makes Face Painting—Floor, White Line (1972), a document of an action in which the artist pushes himself along the floor while painting a white line with his face and body. Unlike Pollock, who lords above the horizontal canvas while he works, McCarthy is facedown, the pathetic, wormlike counterpart to Pollock’s vigorous, masculine (and stubbornly vertical) body.
As a response to McCarthy (whether intentional or otherwise), Franko B reclaims Pollock’s vertical orientation. Unlike Pollock, he paints with his own blood, which leaks out of his open veins as he walks slowly, naked, down a white runway (I Miss You! (2003/2007)).
As a response to the premier of the shockumentary Mondo Cane (1962)—which features a soft-core re-enactment of Klein’s Anthropometries of the Blue Period (1960)—the artist sees red. He has several heart attacks and dies three weeks later.
As a response to the artist Richard Prince, who was commissioned by W Magazine to photograph Kate Moss dressed as a naughty nurse, a furious reader writes, “A REAL NURSE would not even dream of wearing pleather or patent leather, as we would sweat ferociously with all the hard work we do.” Christie’s auction house describes Prince’s painting Lake Resort Nurse as “unit[ing] two gender stereotypes in an unlikely marriage: the macho Abstract Expressionist and the sexy nurse.”
As a response to Pollock and other abstract expressionists, Klein denies any association with the labor of action painting on the grounds that he is “completely detached from all physical work during the time of creation.”
Forensics E (bad boys) enters sideways into this conversation as two months of research, five weeks of half-assed adolescent patricide, and sixty minutes of failed action.
This piece was performed in the Union Art Gallery at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee as part of the Kate Brandt Pink group show. Kate Brandt, a video and performance artist as well as one of my former students, asked all participants to use her signature color in some way.