featured artists
How to Become a Saint Without Dying While You Try
Juan Betancurth, who is leading the Lucky Walk for Elastic City with Todd Shalom, has created a series of works entitled "How to Become a Saint Without Dying While You Try". These series include ritualistic performances, objects and installations that explore Juan's personal relationship to "pain, faith and pleasure" through experiences from his past.
From Juan's website:
"For a long time, I've been fascinated with the lives of Catholic saints, and the extremes they will go to, in order to achieve a mystical experience. The saints understood their bodies as simple flesh, that needs to be mortified to cleanse itself from the desires of the body. In their fanatic search for perfection I found an intriguing relationship between faith, pain and pleasure, three elements I've come to see as recurrent themes throughout my life, while creating this body of work. I began to look back at practices of mortification throughout the history of the Catholic religion, where I found powerful and beautiful tools, used by believers, to inflict pain upon themselves. Through these objects, I became interested in the person behind them, and realized that inside the mind of a saint, is someone who keeps a sadomasochistic relationship with god, who loves, punishes and rewards.
Pain becomes a doorway, feeding the compulsion to relieve the soul from desires of the flesh, to reach the spiritual ecstasy of touching the holy body, to reach god, and have an erotic encounter with him. I read stories of nuns spending nights hanging from their hair to receive spiritual visions; of a village drunk who became a saint by pledging to wear weights under his clothes for the rest of his life in exchange for being healed; a mystic nun who wrote erotic poems to god as she flagellated herself in front of his image; of some who endured long periods of fasting and others who subjected themselves to public humiliation. The more that I know about these people, the more fascinated I become.
Observing the popularity of tortured lives of mystics, I began to draw a connection to the society of drama and spectacle that we are immersed in, where suffering sells, and brings ratings up. I find it interesting that common heroes are still made from those who have suffered in the public eye, bringing me to a sarcastic point of view on our society, myself included, while I use my own story as the subject of my art."
You can send an email here to be notified of Juan's future performances.
photo: Malo de la Tullaye
Featured Artist: Michael Hart
Elastic City: M♥, i'm not sure if this finds you in new york or barcelona. anyway: you live impulsively with a poetry that's both passionate, and in pre$ent-day new york, perhaps masochistic. even when i see doubt in your photos, it's couched in a celebration of the body. so, there's an honesty and also an optimism. do you agree with any of this, and where are you now?
Michael Hart:
NEW YORK
BARCELONA
IMPULSIVELY
PASSIONATE
PRE$ENT-DAY
A work of art is a gift, not a commodity....
Every modern artist who has chosen to labor with a gift must sooner or later wonder how he or she is to survive in a society dominated by market exchange. And if the fruits of a gift are gifts themselves, how is the artist to nourish himself, spiritually as well as materially, in an age whose values are market values and whose commerce consists almost exclusively in the purchase and sale of commodities?
- Lewis Hyde, The Gift
MASOCHISTIC
DOUBT
COUCHED
CELEBRATION OF THE BODY
HONEST
OPTIMISM
AGREE
WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
Thanks for asking. I'm in Shelter Island, New York with Logan Kruger, Roarke Menzies, Davon Rainey & Adam Weinert.
NEW YORK
Almost Perfect | New York, NY | 2010
BARCELONA
Siéntete | Barcelona, Spain | 2009
IMPULSIVELY
Bow-Wow! For SM | Spencertown, NY | 2009
with Jeff and Rufus
PASSIONATE
Self-Portrait #92,039,001 (Made In Maria's Bed) | Barcelona, Spain | 2010
with Michael Hart
MASOCHISTIC
SAD_ | Paris, France | 2010
with The Marquis
DOUBT
Ground Zero | New York, NY | 2009
The Reichstag | Berlin, Germany | 2009
COUCHED
Megan LeCrone With Ladder #1 | New York, NY | 2008
with Megan LeCrone
CELEBRATION OF THE BODY
The Field | Brooklyn, NY | 2006
with Troy Ogilvie, Shamel Pitts, Douglas Letheren and Annie Shreffler
HONEST
Self-Portrait #92,039,015 (Made In Maria's Bed) | Barcelona, Spain | 2010
with Michael Hart
OPTIMISM
Ryan Kelly Is Married To The Universe #1 | New Haven, CT | 2009
with Ryan Kelly
Ryan Kelly Is Married To The Universe #2 | New Haven, CT | 2009
with Ryan Kelly
AGREE
More Than Half | Chicago, IL | 2003
with Topel
WHERE ARE YOU NOW?
The Blue Lagoon in My Mind's Eye: On A Clear Day You Can See Russia From Here | Shelter Island, NY | 2010
Fish Out Of Water | Brooklyn, NY | 2006
with Logan Frances Kruger
I'm Not A Canary, I'm More Of A Coal Miner | Brooklyn, NY | 2009
with Roarke Menzies
This Was Never Green | Brooklyn, NY | 2010
with Davon Rainey
Difficult To Pronou... | Cap De Creus, Catalunya, Spain | 2009
with Adam Weinert
You can find more of Michael's work at http://www.hartharthart.com
Featured Artist: Vadis Turner
Elastic City: Vadis, these works are gorgeous. Tell me, what's on fire?
Vadis Turner: Throughout the first year of my marriage, I am making a series of contemporary heirlooms that will ultimately comprise my Dowry. In my mind, a dowry is a collection of culturally relevant goods that serve as a measure of a woman's worth either in monetary value or handicraft skills. Traditionally, a dowry is given to the husband's family from the bride's family as an offering to secure the union or to advance her in society through marriage. The contents of my Dowry will be traded or sold for professional and financial gain.
My September show in Richmond, VA will be the the last of three Dowry exhibitions. Many rites of passage honor the apex of beauty, fertility or physical potential. It often marks the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. I wanted to create works that bridge various stages of growth and decay. With fire, you see a new beautiful energy being created from a destructive process.
You can view some of Vadis' work on Governors Island through October as part of the "No Longer Empty" show. She also has work on view at the Brooklyn Museum. See photos below of some of Vadis' latest work.
Moving Monuments with Niegel Smith
Monumental Walks
We spoke with Niegel Smith about his walks, “Follow the Leader” and “Monumental Walk” in the middle of Times Square hoopla.
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