Sexy Bastard

Comment

Comment by Resident Curator on July 2, 2013 at 8:50am

Thanks for responding Bob, and offering insight into the iconography.   I do see your intent to portray our culture's fixation on guns with raw sexuality.  Your work is really intense- I'm happy humor is intended as well. 

 

Kristen

Comment by Bob on July 1, 2013 at 11:10am

Thank you for taking the time to comment on my work, it's really appreciated. I'm not insulted by your description of it being fantastically grotesque, I think it's a perfect description. I really enjoyed reading your thoughts behind the two pieces and how you interpreted them. It's really interesting that you say you're not sure if they're meant to be funny as I always unintentionally add a bit of humour to my work. Sometimes the subject matter might be quite serious but I don't take myself too seriously and feel that the art world could benefit from a dose of humour. It has to be a fine line though as a lot of work is frowned upon if it's seen as comical but I hope my work makes people think about the meaning and if it makes them laugh it's an added bonus. To explain the idea behind the Sexy Bastard piece, it's meant to portray people's fascination with violence and especially the use of guns in movies. The idea is that the gun represents the action hero and the three mouths represent the way women are portrayed as fawning over these characters, no matter how violent. The reason for the blacked out eyes is they represent the women as being soulless, how a lot of women in violent movies are there just as secondary characters. So in a way it's a criticism of Hollywood but also I think it can apply to a lot of real life situations where women live with violent partners. I worry sometimes that my work could be mistaken as degrading to women but that's never the case.

Comment by Resident Curator on June 30, 2013 at 10:16pm

Curator’s Comments:

 

Would you be insulted if I said I found these images fantastically grotesque?  There’s obviously a profane blatancy and arguably acerbic sexuality in the stylized pop figures.  But the visual seduction prevails in the strong design solutions utilizing bilateral symmetry. Sexy Bastard is shockingly violent, combining oral and mechanical sex.  The human silhouettes are strangely simplified, reducing their respective and identical mirrored personas to convergent oral fixation. The softness of the yellow skin and central gun is viciously broken by the splattered blood shooting out of the middle- the floating gratifying mouth becoming the object of visceral destruction. I’m not sure how I feel about the dual dripping/bleeding black eye patches.  While I appreciate the anonymity they provide the genderless heads, they carry a fair amount of visual weight, and pull attention away from the points of contact/impact.  I do however like that the handle of the gun smoothes out to suggest an underlying body. It is perhaps the most understated element in the work, though it is still far from a subtle insinuation.  Eyeing Up appears another virulent mixing of stylized figures and sexual sadism.  The stubbed arms of the monstrous conjoined twin render the hulking figure helpless- literally unarmed- against the assaulting eyeballs.  The crimson red mouths echo these elements visually and concurrently evoke blood and lust.  The shared genital area forms an obvious vagina dentata, threatening to consume all in its wake. Ultimately I find these paintings very well crafted, and strangely attractive, but the subject matter overwhelms me as a viewer. I’m not sure if the images are intended to be funny in a darkly comic manner, or if the tag Psychosurrealism has its roots in a fundamentally anarchistic ideology. Either way, they’re impossible to ignore.