May 3–10, 2001

art

Things That Make You Go Ewwww…

Getting thoroughly disgusted at Project Room.

by Susan Hagen

Cathartic Disgust Gestalt

Through May 27, Project Room, 960 N. Eighth St., 215-413-3101.

Disgust and good design: Charles Burns’ Hole in the Head.

If you’ve ever cared for a pooping, peeing, puking newborn, then you’re probably pretty familiar, if not comfortable, with the less appealing, even disgusting, aspects of the human organism. Avant-garde art has often used scatology for part of its punch and the current exhibition at Project Room of work by Tristin Lowe, Charles Burns, Philip Mott and Robert Beck addresses physical disgust — through the subjects of the works and by intentionally provoking a physiological response from the viewer. The show was curated by John Caperton, a young Philadelphia art historian, interested in "the use of disgust by artists as a form of emotional release," who explained "the impact of the work could be compared to watching a good horror movie, cathartic and oddly compelling."

But knowing the interesting premise of the show is no preparation for the shock of these carefully selected works at first hand. In particular, New York artist Robert Beck’s autobiographical 12-minute video Nine Years Later (Panic Remix ) shows a disturbing sequence of an actor applying "blood" to his forearm from a squeeze-bottle. Even though the blood is clearly fake, the mere sight of it dripping off in trickles and sheets verges on nauseating. The soundtrack with a woman dryly reading a script about the development of audio and video recording technology serves only to frame the physiological intensity of the images.

In a bit of a respite, A Garden of Unearthly Delights consists of 42 pages of images collected or made by the Philadelphia underground comic artist Charles Burns. It includes magazine photos showing an operation and a skinned rabbit carcass, reproductions of Sienese paintings and found photos of strangers in unflattering poses. Burns’ sketches and comics are interspersed, among them a cute green hipster girl with stitched-on head and arms and an assortment of other monsters and aliens. Burns is unmatched in his ability to eloquently combine disgust, irony and good design.

Philadelphia artist Philip Mott is known for his purely abstract paintings that indirectly reference the body, but here his mixed-media painting, Tête, replicates raw materials of the head, i.e. brains, blood, hair. A square of plywood, about 15 x 15 inches, is covered with thick puckered pinkish-gray paint and thin red glaze with black threads imbedded in thick patches. This panel, hung artfully on the diagonal, could easily be slipped into a Mütter Museum display, as it presents its horrific human subject with a decorative elegance.

Tristin Lowe’s He’s My Superhero is really the most completely disgusting work in the show. (Congratulations!) Lowe’s disheveled male automaton, dressed in a button-down shirt, trousers and dress shoes, is crudely constructed out of foam and has a crash-test dummy head and a floppy rubber face. At the pressing of a button the figure is activated, and the chug-chugging of the pump and dribbling "vomit" proceed in a hideous, but extremely comical manner. Lowe, a Philadelphia artist, effectively combines his off-the-cuff sculpture methodology with an irreverent, burlesque-inspired sense of humor.

Even though I am the parent of a 5-year-old boy (and all that that implies), I was thoroughly grossed out by this exhibition. But in thinking about the show later, I realized that the work, for better or worse, is charged with the kind of scatological humor in which kindergarten boys excel — though in a considerably more well-honed and purposeful form — and I began to feel more sympathetic and amused. Like the Dadaists of the early 20th century, these four artists are rationally and reasonably commenting on the illogical and unappealing aspects of the human experience with intentionally crude humor and wit. Even though Cathartic Disgust Gestalt may not be likeable, it is well worth seeing. And it’s a good opportunity to check out the consistently interesting work being done at Project Room. An outgrowth of the business and studio operations of sculptor Kait Midgett, Project Room is neither commercial nor nonprofit, with programming based only on the quality and ideas in the work. For the past two years Midgett has put together a line-up of mainly site-specific one-person installations, the artists kicking in the cost of promotion and Midgett helping some as well. She’s also involved in planning and coordinating the upcoming exchange with Chicago alternative galleries, along with Vox Populi, Basekamp and Space 1026, that will result in a show for Philadelphia artists in Chicago at the Butcher Shop space in May and shows of the Chicago artists here in July.