White power
Solo show by Clark Walter
June 28 - July 19, 2008
Galerie de la Friche, Friche la Belle de Mai, 13003 Marseille
The exhibition by Clark Walter at Triangle, opening on June 27th, is born from a cultural shock. It draws much of its inspiration from the direct transition from Norton, Kansas, USA, to Marseille, Bouches-du-Rhône, France. The works presented still explore the artist’s favorite themes, such as sex, violence, pop culture, advertising, porn, American junk food, religion, and recurring motifs like the penis, the severed member, bleeding ears of corn, skull fuck, the Ku Klux Klan, television, multicolored condoms, singing vaginal crosses, and many more.
When Clark began constructing a volcano in his studio, then decided to paint the walls blue “like paradise” and drill holes in the “president’s closet,” he quickly realized that the exhibition was happening right there in the studio and wouldn’t be able to leave. It was then decided that the exhibition would be opened jointly with Dernier Cri (with whom Clark will create a publication/DVD in July) that will feature another American artist, Stumead, known for depicting trios of police/priest/little girl in a very similar vein. From then on, the exhibition will be accessed through a winding path, aided by more or less practical accessories designed to symbolize the overdose of comfort and circulation in the American way of life. Upon entry, Clark, disguised as a drunken redneck, will gladly lead visitors through a guided tour of the manichean and colorful world taking shape in his studio, made of repainted bus posters, mutant toys, subverted symbols, and blasphemous animations, all set to a cacophonic soundtrack often produced by the objects themselves, evoking a mixture of grunge and mall aesthetics typical of the schizophrenia many Europeans associate with America.
For Clark, this exhibition is an attack on the cursed second-degree irony that poisons so many so-called political contemporary art exhibitions, through the first-degree: a first degree that is joyful, liberating, and epiphanic. “White Power”: Is there a more concise way to sum up the state of the world when you are an artist who claims to be political? With a typical Warholian (or even Walmart-ian) sense of counter-formula, Clark paints a rather dark portrait of his American dream… unless he is actually from Marseille?