I hear the next performance piece will be Titled “Fear and Loathing in Wynwood”. The locations will be a “Derive” or drift through the lower debts of Miami’s spectacular cultural complexes. Advanced reading or familiarity with “The Rum Diary” and the “Gonzo Papers” may set the proper context for the participatory “Situation” (ist) creation.

Sincerely though
Friend and Eye Witness and Commenting Art News observer

Richard Haden

http://blogs.indiewire.com/twhalliii/thompson_hunters_320x240.jpg
thompson_hunters_320x240.jpg”>i

…out of a small list of tropes that I can remember…allegory, antanaclasis, irony, metonymy, metaphor, oxymoron (and some that I have to look up-to remember) antithesis, hyperbole, litotes, meiosis, onomatopoeia, paranomasia (punning), periphrases, and then some, I’d say that Currin is like the Ad executive. He uses rhetorical figures as style deviations and as ad-openness to play with archetypes displayed in art histories past. I’d say he takes appropriates, covers, captures, seizes, conquers, assumes, usurps, takes over and arrogates his way on to the walls of Gagosian splendor.
“in advertising researchers began to devote attention to the abundance of rhetorical figures, Sometimes called tropes, or ad-openness…rhetorical figures are defined as style deviations that present advertising messages using figurative rather than literal claims.

Although, Currin may lack the punch of a marketed referent or seriously “own” an investment in necessity–he is selling, instead, not the portrait or picture of anachronistic melding–but is rendering an image of himself, sporting coxcomb and paint brush in way of his cheek by jowl or tongue and cheek mannerist blending behavior. It appears he is like a lot of contemporary artist who are a cross between Thomas Kinkade and Larry Flint…ie Koons and the recently arrived contributor to neo-art-erotica of Marquis de Sade aesthetics, Mr Quinn.

The historical pun…is what he does…may be a bit ironic in that we get that his art usurps or undermines a point of departure or purpose…and if one is expecting a right, left blow of critical care then it is that we are looking for something that is not there…it is what they are not…not seriously about presence or critique…I suppose it is more a matter of a sense of humor than taste? We all need to laugh, huh. And his illustrations do that, I guess.

Gavin Turk does a similar thing in some of his work. He replaces his face for that of the historical icon he is rendering…bouts with authenticity is more of his concern though…and reevaluating the use of hierarchical objects as qualified signifier, is also his rhetorical discourse and point. http://www.whitecube.com/artists/turk/iv/ As in the “Death of Marat”. He does a good CHE as well.

Seriously copying and pasting my way to critical bliss…I almost forgot the best for last. There is the sophomoric, worlds worst, self promoting, want to be artisan who thanks to the folks of “Johnson and Johnson” have left their heir–Seward Johnson– to play in a made up art world all his own. His Traveling exhibition (who ever he pays to take it), “Beyond the Frame” does in 3-D what Currin’s does on canvas. If Currin’s needed antithesis to credit his work, I offer an example of how really bad, a not so bad idea can be: To realize old masters works in three dimensions by a really bad craftsman. But no one wants to tell him how bad he is for he owns and funds a wonderful sculpture garden called Grounds for sculpture: http://www.groundsforsculpture.org/index.html

Thank you for the space to rant.

Richard Haden

http://hoodmuseum.dartmouth.edu/exhibitions/previous/lateralthinking/currin.html I like this one: The Hobo