The Sweetest Thing & Celestial Crisis: The Band Has Abandoned Us

Andrew Erdos:

“The Sweetest Thing” is Andrew Erdos’s first exhibition at Jack the Pelican. Santalopes are everywhere. Visitors will encounter a giant Santalope gingerbread house, a video of Santalope sex on a deserted Australian beach, Mrs. Santalope’s live North Pole dance—and her unabashed girl-on-girl eroticism—Santalopes at the Great Wall of China, Santalopes in glass, and lots and lots of candy. It is puerile and crass, NC-17, joyously ridiculous, and also very beautiful.

Santalopes are a mythical breed of the artist’s invention—a chimerical hybrid of jolly old Saint Nick and garden-variety antelope. Their devotees mask themselves in traditional styrofoam Christmas Santa door decorations, custom-fitted with horns… They’re a little clumsy to wear. You have to look out of the mouth to see.

For several years, ambassador of American trash culture Andrew Erdos has reveled in Christmas year-round in the guise of a Santalope, traveling the world and spreading good cheer, like an ugly American ‘Son of Santa’ on Spring Break. Up until now, he’s been building an international fraternity of Santalopes, colliding with the customs and historical heritage of other nations, marveling at his own absurdity, and documenting it exhaustively in celebration of his own banality. This year marks the appearance of his female counterpart, Mrs. Santalope. Now, he embraces the intimate side of his own likeness. “The Sweetest Thing” is Erdos’s paean to the saccharine euphoria of Santalope mating rituals and sex.

Center stage is the giant gingerbread house. The exterior is wildly colorful with hundreds and hundreds of pounds of candy and other sweets in glorious variety. Inside, it is a pristine white winter landscape of crystalline sugar snow. During the opening on September 11, it will be inhabited by Mrs. Santalope, buck-naked, and her attendant lesser female Santalopes, who cuddle and caress her with adoring abandon. This is the collaborative contribution of Meira Robinson, an accomplished dancer, acrobat and artist who shares Erdos’s fascination with false idols and his enthusiasm for collapsing the boundaries between the media.

Tweny-four year old New York based artist Andrew Erdos works in a variety of media combining sculpture, video,performance,photography and installation. He has exhibited at venues such as The National Centre for Contemporary Art(Moscow), Beijing BS1 Contemporary Art Center, The Chelsea Art Museum and was included in the 2008 Deitch Projects Art Parade. This will be his second New York solo show of 2009.

Carol Kane:

“She Who Destroys the Light” is Carol ‘Riot’ Kane’s gothic cathedral of an exhibition, with rock stars as saints. You don’t have to be a fan yourself (Jack the Pelican most certainly isn’t) to realize that this art rocks. Fandom is usually insipid. Here, it’s a monumental cosmology, fully realized.

This is all about Nine Inch Nails. For fans who have followed them for years, Riot among them, the show is timely. The final date on their Wave Goodbye tour is Labor Day, September 6—five days before the opening of this show. This is a difficult and uncertain time. The exhibition marks a turning point.

NIN may be the inspiration. But it’s not the reality. At the end of the day, this is Carol Riot Kane improvising a band that maybe could have been. Since 2001, she has been weaving a complex mythology inspired by her experiences following NIN. The larger than life characters featured in her work are all inspired by other fans, and the complex relationships within the band’s community.

Among the works on display is her epic tome about the band, years in the making. It’s inspired by the band’s 20-year musical odyssey, but takes great liberties to go off on its own highly imaginative path. Riot transforms the fans into heroic figures, in the likes of Odysseus and Hercules. Rock Star himself is transformed into a rebellious Greek God, named Celestial, who is marked for death due to his alleged Hubris.

As her bio notes: “Riot is the gun toting, plaster casting, ass kicking, punk rock version of the Greek poet Homer, brilliantly translating pre-existing legends of the band she follows into truly epic works of art.” She does this, she explains, to give outsiders a sense of just how epic it is to be a fan.

The focal points of the exhibition are two monumental statues—one of a ghostlike Celestial draped across a harp and the other of a towering female creator/destroyer figure, in her own signature purple. The moment depicted is a mythic struggle between Riot’s devotion to the Rock Star, and her desire to destroy all that she feels has become corrupt in the band.

She conjures a version of Rock Star in the last moment she felt respect for him. She must decide weather to burn away all that she was — or to keep the faith, and do all that she can to keep the fan community together in the absence of their hero. The sculptures take on a sublime, otherworldly presence, combining the verisimilitude of masterful wax portraiture with the gorgeous naturalism of Classical Greek marbles and the pale, deathly aura of Romantic and Pre-Raphaelite painting.

Riot presents a further series of framed drawings as votive shrines, with candles. Each vignette depicts a pivotal moment in the history of her mythology, giving us a unique view into her vision. “Celestial Crisis: The Band Has Abandoned Us” speaks to the collective emotional experience of all fans who feel so strongly about a band.

On August 24, The New York Times did a story on one of NIN’s final NYC appearances. There, in the accompanying image, front and center among the fans, is Riot, long red hair streaked with purple. Riot attends as many shows as she can, and she treats each with intensity, as though it were that her first or her last. She has even designed a signature NIN concert-ware dress, for which she is well known. Like many who have visibly and actively attended so many shows, she has acquired a level of infamy.

The fan community has been notorious for its online spats, but they are in the end a very tightly knit community, extremely devoted. It is one massive extended family, with Reznor acting as Guardian over his fans. This bond that leads fans to follow the band is what inspires Riot to bring us her wild vision of the world. Riot has shown at the Tate Britain, The Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and 31Grand Gallery. She was the recipient of special project Grant at Scope New York in 2005. Her work was also featured on the cover of the New York Times in 2006. Riot attended FIT where she took an independent study in sculpture. She received her Masters in 2004 from SVA.