Corporate Poop

Albo Jeavons: Master of Scatology

by Bruce Schimmel

The art of Albo Jeavons is disgusting. And that's good, because the Philadelphia-based artist wants you to feel that his favorite subject is brimming with shit. Jeavons is obsessed with corporations. He loathes them with a ferocity that's usually reserved only for the living.

The gallery, Space 1026, that is hosting Jeavons' retrospective practically oozes with poop. Over the doorway, a bloated businessman appears to emerge from a giant turd. Outside the second-floor windows, Jeavons has hung two overstuffed effigies of bin Laden and Bush. It's a satisfying spectacle, perhaps even for a pacificist.

Jeavons' work is neither for the faint of heart nor the weak of stomach. As a friend of mine who's a fine arts painter puts it, Jeavons' art is an eyeful of heads-up butts.

Jeavons is best known for his satirical send-up called "DisneyHole," from the eponymous project that is now a Market Street parking lot. When the company killed its DisneyQuest Philadelphia entertainment-complex project, Jeavons proposed in its place a museum of corporate malfeasance. He wanted to enlarge the men in his Business as Usual sculpture—on their hands and knees, one man's head is inserted into the other's ass—to the size of elephants. And, as an added tourist attraction, have them rotating outside the museum on a huge platter.

Jeavons' current exhibit features several corporate droids performing equally revolting acts. A headless man-in-a-suit gives bloody birth to another; mobiles of stuffed white shirts adorned with penis-like neckties twist slowly from the ceiling; a hanging mannequin appears to drip feces on the floor.

Like I said, disgusting.

But if presidential politics has left you enervated, Jeavons' work is guaranteed to give you a jolt. Though maybe you'll want to see it before lunch.

Albo Jeavons' "corpoRACIST: multi-media investigations of the monstrous body and schizophrenic mind of the corporate person" runs through Oct. 29, Space 1026, 1026 Arch St., 215-574-7630.