The ArtCat calendar is closed as of December 31, 2012. Please visit Filterizer for art recommendations.


ARTCAT



THE FERAL CHILD HAS NO USE FOR ART

Martos Gallery
540 West 29th Street, 212-560-0670
Chelsea
April 7 - May 14, 2011
Reception: Thursday, April 7, 10 - 6 PM
Web Site


_We lived like this for months, roaming the mountainside, snarling, drooling, fucking the dirt, stoned on bitter peyote that grew by the fistful. Our hair tangled. Our teeth black. Selforphaned. Blind by choice. Veiled snipers. Armed with a rusty old Kalashnikov (no bullets) that we used to smash and dig and maim, and to scare off the village priest — in his shredded robes and wooden rosary — who had doggedly hunted us like the wild gamine that we were. We existed on a steady diet of swan. Never bathing. Dry, cracked mud falling from us like ancient Greek amphora. A single word between us did not pass. We dared not desecrate our tongues with the melody of some distant childhood lullaby. We remained mute. The silence of our day shattered only by the distant, metallic clang of civilization, rattling our ears and bashing in our brains, until all we saw and tasted was blood._

For their first collaborative exhibition, artists Caroline Snow and Bozidar Brazda take a page from Snow’s zine Feral Child and use it to conceive of a series of vaguely anthropomorphic, shack-like sculptures. Built by Snow and Brazda — from scrap metal, cardboard, wood and Belgian canvas — each shack is equal parts shelter and tomb, proposing the gallery as both cemetery and shanty town. Seen in this context, the structures suggest the art viewing experience, at least in part, as a means by which to circumvent life (television being a common example of this same phenomenon) in favor of a safer, cleaner proxy. Perhaps in its role as shelter/tomb, art is ultimately designed to shield humanity from the dirt of its wild roots. And by default, from its collective inner feral child.

www.flickr.com
Have photos of this show? Tag them with artcat13352 to see them here.