Bottoms Up

Bottoms Up
Opening Reception: Friday, June 5, 6:00 to 9:00pm
Exhibition Dates: Wednesdays thru Saturdays, June 5 toJuly 3, 1998
Times: 12 noon to 5:00pm
Location: The LAB, 2948 16th Street
Contact: 415.864.8855, www.thelab.org

Curated by Robert Glück and Chris Komater

This exhibit will demonstrate the ways in which ten artists describe the view from the bottom—from a sex-positive position that welcomes new beauty ideals and sexual configurations onto the stage of history—to one that asserts the integrity of pathology—that is, if it’s not pitiful and a testament to loss, it’s not good art. Bottomness can be seen as a spiritual path, as a position of political estrangement, as an attitude to materials (threadbare, ephemeral, and ugly), or as a kind of nausea that informs the creative process itself. For the curators, bottomness seems to have overtaken and replaced the role of mastery on the artistic horizon, and the exhibition will make an interesting statement by bringing together artists who are more servant than master. BOTTOMS UP will demonstrate the glories of shame, abjection and awkwardness, as well as honor heroes and heroines of the bottom.

Participating artists include:
Didi Dunphy
Scott Hewicker
Arnold J. Kemp
Cary S. Leibowitz/CANDYASS
John Lindell
Loring McAlpin
Rolando Merida
Caitlin Mitchell-Dayton
Peter Mitchell-Dayton
Michelle Rollman