"The Michael Jackson Project" en la galleria Zsa Zsa (ingles con español pronto....)
Esto viene del Toronto Star.
Se trata de una galleria basada en la aparencia de Michael Jackson (que la verdad no me agrada nada... pero bueno)
Aqui se los dejo en Ingles. Vendre con la traduccion mas tarde en el dia
Saludos
--------------------------------------oo------------------------------------
By the time you leave the Zsa Zsa gallery on Queen St. W., you realize "The Michael Jackson Project" is not about Michael Jackson at all. Rather, it's about the multiple images Jackson has made out of himself. It's about pop art revisited, revised and turned inside out by artists like Leif Harmsen, who has produced a series of Mona Lisa-inspired images called Culture Vs. Nature.
Wacko Jacko an inspiration to us all
Zsa Zsa gallery's Michael Jackson Project is perfect summer show
You've got to hand it to Michael Jackson for one thing, at least — defying description.
I don't mean his predilection for plastic surgery. Every time the media figures it's really got Jacko in its sights, he morphs into the Wizard of Odds.
Not only does he miraculously survive the onslaught but returns with some fresh surprise/shock/horror that blows the earlier one right off the radar.
Follow the pattern. Last year's reputation-shredding TV clip showing him dangling one of his children from a German hotel-room window was followed in short order by Jackson's assertion that he loves children.
Next up will be the Michael Jackson-is-broke story. (He reportedly owes Sony more money than there is in the world.) Following the pattern, his next act will be to go out and buy North Dakota.
And this weird cycle will never end. It can't. The media's too hooked to quit. So is he. Even his demise will only release the grisly spectre of old dark secrets brought to pale life. I mean, if you think Dead Elvis is big, he won't be allowed to drive the Dead Jacko tour bus. (That other scenario — that Jackson will never die, having replaced himself entirely through plastic surgery — is scarier to contemplate than a Freddie Vs. Jason sequel.)
But along comes Zsa Zsa to the rescue — the Zsa Zsa gallery (962 Queen St. W.) presenting 30 artists, and counting, as part of their "Michael Jackson Project," where Mikey is deified, damned, stuffed, plucked, turned into The Good Shepherd (poor little sheep) and transformed into the very art icon he's worked so long and hard to become.
He's even been made into a multiple Mona Lisa — the Leonardo Da Vinci one, not the Lisa Marie Presley one — with that weird little smile.
For starters, co-curators Andrew Harwood and Lex Vaughn understand there's no single identity on which to pin your love or hatred of this man-boy-Liz wannabe. (See what I mean? We should be thankful Jackson isn't into serious name-changing or we'd probably end up writing him up in cuneiform.)
The notion of Jackson as mutant plays big in R.M. Vaughan's The Trials Of Michael Jackson, the show's brochure-sized catalogue raisonée.
"Jackson's enormous celebrity makes him simultaneously familiar and remote, and thus the idea flat screen for our culture's projected neuroses, hang-ups and displaced guilt," says Vaughan. "The public made Jackson what he is today, and, as Dr. Frankenstein learned, the only way to relieve the guilt of such procreation is to hunt the monster down."
So far, Jackson keeps slipping out of everyone's grasp. "He's a shape shifter," Harwood tells me, "a golem."
And that's only the beginning. Jackson is now well beyond merely one identity at a time. He is more than the sum of his multiple selves. "He has transcended sexuality, race, religion, class, family gender, human form and the law; all in the eyes of the public," write Harwood and Vaughn.
Zsa Zsa's Mikey moment — the show's over next Friday, far too soon — can be deadly subversive if you check out Fast Würms' Wiz-Dum (2003), the new, improved edit of The Wiz. It's miles better and reels shorter (taking about 6 minutes) than the seemingly endless (two-plus hours) Sidney Lumet version from 1978.
The show's also deliciously naughty. In Lisa Pereira's video loop, Jackson Bath Scandal (2003), two big guys — Harwood says it's like "bear porno" — are soaking in a tub. In the video and the tub, position is everything. The guy in front wears a monkey mask. The guy in back is in whiteface, wearing Jackson's trademark Thriller hat. They soap up. Suds and sex break out, with lots of grunting in between. Things don't come clean.
Hush, by David Hawe, is subversive, naughty and spectacularly devious. In this photograph, the index finger of a silver glove touches the lips of a beautiful young boy. The child's eyes are filled with an intense trust. He stares off to one side, presumably into the eyes of the glove-wearer.
What makes the image thoroughly unnerving is the way it fits precisely into the accepted canon of idolized imagery Jackson has crafted for himself over the years. It's an image of unmistakeable religiosity even if you don't take into account all those nasty suspicions about those innocent sleepovers in Never Never Land — but particularly if you do.
But for all the fun Zsa Zsa is having — this is a classic summer show, complete with a homemade Mikey doll and Mikey's image on darkened sunglasses — it also entertains issues about how art defines celebrity culture and is in turn defined by it.
Even though many things are uncertain about Jackson, in one particular pursuit he's been entirely consistent. Throughout his life he's desperately addressed the idea of the perfection of beauty as well as the very idea of perfection as found through beauty. It's never been more complicated than that, really.
Mikey wants to be God and play God all at once.
He thought he found it having white skin. He found it borrowing Diana Ross' cheekbones. He copied the young Elizabeth Taylor's raven hair. Basically, he found it in old movie magazines that as a little kid growing up in the '60s were already way before his time. In short, he found it in the past (and with Taylor, the living past). Through all this, he's functioned as a body artist with his own body as canvas.
Of course, in this pursuit of that old-fashioned ideal of beauty — feminine beauty at that — he's been destroying himself, another classic way to go. Jackson is nothing if not an old-fashioned romantic when it comes to martyrdom. The one image missing from Zsa Zsa is Jackson as San Sebastian, the poor old Catholic saint, his torso bristling with arrows, dying a neverending death in a thousand lurid portraits.
Yet "The Michael Jackson Project" has its share of quietly moving moments, none better than Katie Bethune-Leaman's Wounded Celebrity series, where Jackson is shown hobbled by crutches like some old sailor just back from a long and terrifying voyage.
"There is a lot of humour in the show," says Harwood.
"But there is the dark side. There are some accusations about Jackson in this show."
What's truly terrifying about Jackson's beauty obsession is that it offers no possible resolution. Once, art made beauty seem unobtainable, rather like Venus luxuriating in front of her own image in Diego Velázquez's painting, The Toilet Of Venus.
Now art works the opposite way, making beauty's perfection seem only a Photoshop mouse-click or Botox injection away. The more Jackson fixes his looks the less likely he'll ever get to what he's after.
So by the time you leave Zsa Zsa, you realize "The Michael Jackson Project" is not about Michael Jackson at all. Rather, it's about the multiple images Jackson made out of himself. It's about pop art revisited, revised and turned inside out.
Rather than having Andy Warhol endlessly replicate a star's image, it's the star endlessly repeating his own image, with all the artists of his time trailing along behind, trying to catch up.
Esto viene del Toronto Star.
Se trata de una galleria basada en la aparencia de Michael Jackson (que la verdad no me agrada nada... pero bueno)
Aqui se los dejo en Ingles. Vendre con la traduccion mas tarde en el dia
Saludos
--------------------------------------oo------------------------------------
By the time you leave the Zsa Zsa gallery on Queen St. W., you realize "The Michael Jackson Project" is not about Michael Jackson at all. Rather, it's about the multiple images Jackson has made out of himself. It's about pop art revisited, revised and turned inside out by artists like Leif Harmsen, who has produced a series of Mona Lisa-inspired images called Culture Vs. Nature.
Wacko Jacko an inspiration to us all
Zsa Zsa gallery's Michael Jackson Project is perfect summer show
You've got to hand it to Michael Jackson for one thing, at least — defying description.
I don't mean his predilection for plastic surgery. Every time the media figures it's really got Jacko in its sights, he morphs into the Wizard of Odds.
Not only does he miraculously survive the onslaught but returns with some fresh surprise/shock/horror that blows the earlier one right off the radar.
Follow the pattern. Last year's reputation-shredding TV clip showing him dangling one of his children from a German hotel-room window was followed in short order by Jackson's assertion that he loves children.
Next up will be the Michael Jackson-is-broke story. (He reportedly owes Sony more money than there is in the world.) Following the pattern, his next act will be to go out and buy North Dakota.
And this weird cycle will never end. It can't. The media's too hooked to quit. So is he. Even his demise will only release the grisly spectre of old dark secrets brought to pale life. I mean, if you think Dead Elvis is big, he won't be allowed to drive the Dead Jacko tour bus. (That other scenario — that Jackson will never die, having replaced himself entirely through plastic surgery — is scarier to contemplate than a Freddie Vs. Jason sequel.)
But along comes Zsa Zsa to the rescue — the Zsa Zsa gallery (962 Queen St. W.) presenting 30 artists, and counting, as part of their "Michael Jackson Project," where Mikey is deified, damned, stuffed, plucked, turned into The Good Shepherd (poor little sheep) and transformed into the very art icon he's worked so long and hard to become.
He's even been made into a multiple Mona Lisa — the Leonardo Da Vinci one, not the Lisa Marie Presley one — with that weird little smile.
For starters, co-curators Andrew Harwood and Lex Vaughn understand there's no single identity on which to pin your love or hatred of this man-boy-Liz wannabe. (See what I mean? We should be thankful Jackson isn't into serious name-changing or we'd probably end up writing him up in cuneiform.)
The notion of Jackson as mutant plays big in R.M. Vaughan's The Trials Of Michael Jackson, the show's brochure-sized catalogue raisonée.
"Jackson's enormous celebrity makes him simultaneously familiar and remote, and thus the idea flat screen for our culture's projected neuroses, hang-ups and displaced guilt," says Vaughan. "The public made Jackson what he is today, and, as Dr. Frankenstein learned, the only way to relieve the guilt of such procreation is to hunt the monster down."
So far, Jackson keeps slipping out of everyone's grasp. "He's a shape shifter," Harwood tells me, "a golem."
And that's only the beginning. Jackson is now well beyond merely one identity at a time. He is more than the sum of his multiple selves. "He has transcended sexuality, race, religion, class, family gender, human form and the law; all in the eyes of the public," write Harwood and Vaughn.
Zsa Zsa's Mikey moment — the show's over next Friday, far too soon — can be deadly subversive if you check out Fast Würms' Wiz-Dum (2003), the new, improved edit of The Wiz. It's miles better and reels shorter (taking about 6 minutes) than the seemingly endless (two-plus hours) Sidney Lumet version from 1978.
The show's also deliciously naughty. In Lisa Pereira's video loop, Jackson Bath Scandal (2003), two big guys — Harwood says it's like "bear porno" — are soaking in a tub. In the video and the tub, position is everything. The guy in front wears a monkey mask. The guy in back is in whiteface, wearing Jackson's trademark Thriller hat. They soap up. Suds and sex break out, with lots of grunting in between. Things don't come clean.
Hush, by David Hawe, is subversive, naughty and spectacularly devious. In this photograph, the index finger of a silver glove touches the lips of a beautiful young boy. The child's eyes are filled with an intense trust. He stares off to one side, presumably into the eyes of the glove-wearer.
What makes the image thoroughly unnerving is the way it fits precisely into the accepted canon of idolized imagery Jackson has crafted for himself over the years. It's an image of unmistakeable religiosity even if you don't take into account all those nasty suspicions about those innocent sleepovers in Never Never Land — but particularly if you do.
But for all the fun Zsa Zsa is having — this is a classic summer show, complete with a homemade Mikey doll and Mikey's image on darkened sunglasses — it also entertains issues about how art defines celebrity culture and is in turn defined by it.
Even though many things are uncertain about Jackson, in one particular pursuit he's been entirely consistent. Throughout his life he's desperately addressed the idea of the perfection of beauty as well as the very idea of perfection as found through beauty. It's never been more complicated than that, really.
Mikey wants to be God and play God all at once.
He thought he found it having white skin. He found it borrowing Diana Ross' cheekbones. He copied the young Elizabeth Taylor's raven hair. Basically, he found it in old movie magazines that as a little kid growing up in the '60s were already way before his time. In short, he found it in the past (and with Taylor, the living past). Through all this, he's functioned as a body artist with his own body as canvas.
Of course, in this pursuit of that old-fashioned ideal of beauty — feminine beauty at that — he's been destroying himself, another classic way to go. Jackson is nothing if not an old-fashioned romantic when it comes to martyrdom. The one image missing from Zsa Zsa is Jackson as San Sebastian, the poor old Catholic saint, his torso bristling with arrows, dying a neverending death in a thousand lurid portraits.
Yet "The Michael Jackson Project" has its share of quietly moving moments, none better than Katie Bethune-Leaman's Wounded Celebrity series, where Jackson is shown hobbled by crutches like some old sailor just back from a long and terrifying voyage.
"There is a lot of humour in the show," says Harwood.
"But there is the dark side. There are some accusations about Jackson in this show."
What's truly terrifying about Jackson's beauty obsession is that it offers no possible resolution. Once, art made beauty seem unobtainable, rather like Venus luxuriating in front of her own image in Diego Velázquez's painting, The Toilet Of Venus.
Now art works the opposite way, making beauty's perfection seem only a Photoshop mouse-click or Botox injection away. The more Jackson fixes his looks the less likely he'll ever get to what he's after.
So by the time you leave Zsa Zsa, you realize "The Michael Jackson Project" is not about Michael Jackson at all. Rather, it's about the multiple images Jackson made out of himself. It's about pop art revisited, revised and turned inside out.
Rather than having Andy Warhol endlessly replicate a star's image, it's the star endlessly repeating his own image, with all the artists of his time trailing along behind, trying to catch up.
