This week, I put paintbrush to canvas for the first piece in my upcoming GLORIOUS EXCESS (DIES) exhibition. The show is only a few months away (January '09 at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles).
First, a refresher course: in June of this year, I debuted the show and concept in GLORIOUS EXCESS (BORN)--a series of work following a fictional celebrity character who is filthy rich, morally vacant, and good at one thing: being a celebrity. He's not a rock star, he's not an actor, he's not famous for any particular talent; he simply became famous because he's good at it, and plays by the rules of "star culture" in order to maintain his status.
I knew when I started, over a year ago, that this character's addiction to celebrity status would inevitably grow to a point where he could no longer feed it. There would be a time when the expectations of him would be too high, the emotional baggage would be too heavy, he will have tried every trick. There would be only one way to reach the next level. That next level is what january's show is all about.
In January he will die!
Initially, I thought it might be fun to have three parts to the show: birth, life, and death. but the "life" section felt unnecessary. His story is a meteoric rise and catastrophic crash-and-burn. And then he will be gone. The fun part will be figuring out how it's going to work.
In the meantime, I'll be posting some images of the stuff in progress, the ideas i'm thinking about, and related materials...come back often, I don't want you to miss anything.
mike
