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06: The
Mile High Club
Randy Moore
January 14- February 11,
2000
In the show "The Mile-High Club," New York-based
artist Randy Moore explores the world of Playboy magazine
and the culture it has spawned: an All-American dream-space
where men are men, women are bunnies, and fantasy is
all.
Composed of over one hundred works on paper and one
video, the show presents the well-known icons of Playboy's
Swinger Style--the bunnies, the mansion, the black-and-white
corporate logo--but in Moore's hands, they are stripped
of their original glossy, air-brushed perfection. Instead,
he reproduces them using pencil, ball point pen, sheets
of white paper--materials that might be found stuffed
in any schoolboy's backpack. The result is a kind of
obsessive, almost spooky, portrait of desire and longing.
In the piece "Centerfolds of the Century: The Stuff
that Dreams are Made of," Moore reproduces the
100 centerfolds that recently ran in Playboy's Millennium
issue. Just as they were in the magazine, each woman
in Moore's series of drawings is cataloged by name and
ranked by number (according to what and who's criteria
remains a mystery), with Marilyn Monroe holding pride
of place at number one, Pamela Anderson Lee at number
four, and the likes of Anna Nicole Smith, Betty Page
and Jenny McCarthy following close behind. Further down
are a host of others, long forgotten but still smiling.
The result, both obsessive in its detail and eerie in
its seemingly arbitrary classifications, brings to mind
phylogenetic species charts found in natural history
museums. In another piece, titled "Subscription,
Female Version," Moore has reproduced, in oil on
paper, the spines of a year's worth of Playboy magazines.
Centered and isolated on a white sheet of paper, the
images are surprisingly elegant yet at the same time,
uncomfortably vulnerable. And in "Dissemination,"
the artist displays the results of a year-long performance
where he masturbated to a different Playboy centerfold
each month. In the resulting twelve drawings--each representing
the playboy icon drawn with semen. He also paints (in
oil) the spine of each months magazine, resulting in
a large piece consiting of 24 drawings.
The opening reception is on Friday March 3rd, 8-11pm;
LOCUST PROJECTS is open Saturdays 12-4. All Other times
please call for appointment (305) 576-8570.
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