Grifting: Keith Boadwee
Claire L. Evans
Despite the debate raging presently over whether or not Portland's art scene is a site of hope or despair, twee crafts or conceptualism, disappointing in broad strokes or streaked with moments of impressive, even visceral, pleasure, the heavy parade of shows tromps on, some good, some bad, most unseen by even the most discerning townies, and here we are, right in the beginning-middle of a grift about Keith Boadwee's show, This Is A Low, at Rocks Box.
DISCLAIMER: this is maybe one of four art shows I've been to in Portland in the last few years.
SPOILER ALERT: Boadwee dies. Just kidding, but I did really like the show.
The San Francisco-based Boadwee is most famous for giving himself paint enemas and shitting on canvas, which is something that is perhaps not as shocking now as it was in the identity-politics-1990s. Still This Is A Low is super gay. Is that why I like it? It's hard to say. Boadwee's work is both funny and dick-based, without ever really crossing the line into "crass."
Example: California Souvenir (above) is a sex-toy memento of our nation's finest state. Abstract from purpose (sans butt), something vulgar can be a chotcke, or, if you read it politically, a celebration of California's relatively lax gay marriage laws.
Untitled (Piss In Mouth) is best. It's so well-executed that it's not even shocking, just beautiful. In many ways like that Serrano piece, Piss Christ, only this has the added benefit of being the most simple closed-circuit human system I've ever seen. Nothing wasted, right? Plus I love to imagine that fucked-up scenes like these are happening in sunny backyards all over California.
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COMMENTS (3)
Well the esteemed weekly does not hold a similar sentiment, Claire:
(quote)
Keith Boadwee’s solo show is called "This Is a Low." If only. The L.A.-based artist made a name for himself eons ago by filling his ass with egg tempera paint, then spurting the stuff out onto a canvas as a simultaneous tribute and insult to abstract expressionism. He has been riding his own soiled coattails ever since, trying to milk the bad-boy shock-schlinger rep for all it’s worth. In Boadwee’s current show, the most shocking work is a self-portrait of himself peeing into his own mouth. Yawn. You could pull up more shocking images in a quarter of a second via Google Image Search. The second-most-shocking works were his painted snowmen, whose stacked spheres are supposed to represent turds rather than snow. There are plenty of things left in this world to shock sensibilities and provoke thought, but unfortunately for Boadwee, none of those things are up his butt or spraying out of his urethra. RICHARD SPEER.
(/quote)
I don't think the point of Boadwee's work is to shock. I think that's a very shallow interpretation. There's nothing "bad boy" about pissing in one's own mouth, it's more of a poetic gesture that has deep psychological meaning and works as an inversion of deeply rooted value systems which we take for granted. If you weren't so sure his work was about "shock value" then perhaps you'd look at it more closely. The problem is that most people aren't open minded enough to look at a photograph of someone pissing in one's mouth the same way they would look at a painting by rembrandt.
Wait, did you even read this?
"It's so well-executed that it's not even shocking, just beautiful."