…was all the “rage” Friday night, with group shows opening at the current CoCA space (across from the Hostess bakery on Dexter) and the Crespinel Gallery on Second.
The CoCA show, 101 Ways to Remove a President from Power, is a mixed bag creative-wise. The contributing artists are united in their loathing for the sitting President (and their consipcuous lack of attention toward his challenger). Some of the artists fused their rage with fun and/or insight; but others settled for the weary ol’ conformist-nonconformist cliches of square-bashing and Nazi-baiting.
Among the worst examples: Three performance artists (below) who donned thrift-store apparel and old-man makeup to appear as “typical” Republican voters, senile geezers who wheeze about family values while grabbing young ladies’ posteriors.
Our ol’ collaborator DJ Superjew gave a more intriguing contribution with The Disregarder, a four-page tabloid commenting wryly on corporate-news-media silliness. (She hand-printed the thing on a vintage letterpress, using coarse pulp-magazine style paper.)
Meanwhile, about a mile away at the Crespinel space, Larry Reid (who used to run CoCA) organized Art vs. Bush. It was a benefit for the previously-mentioned-here No Vote Left Behind organization. Many of the contributing artists donated pre-existing work, much of which had no overtly political content.
But we did get to see former ice-cream baron Ben Cohen’s PantsOnFire-Mobile, an art-car construction being towed across the nation, bearing smoke and artificial flame out the statue’s rear and flashing messages of “lies” across its front.
And Randolph Sill showed off his “877,” a collection of little ceramic coffins (one for every U.S. military death in Iraq as of June). With quiet dignity, Sill offers a more powerful statement against Bush than all the CoCA show’s contributors combined.
One day earlier, our ol’ pal Ross Palmer Beecher won her dispute with the powers-that-be at the Harbor Steps development. They’d asked her to contribute to one of its monthly art shows. Then they tried to rescind the invite when she presented an arrangement of beer-can parts that played on the similarity of Bush to Busch.
