Pink as hell

This was originally sent as an email to Umělec Magazine publisher Ivan Mécl January 17, 2006 10:44 PM, about an hour after I saw Pink Not Dead, a collective exhibition presented by Maurycy Gomuliki, a Polish artist living in Mexico City. I went to Maurycy and Maurycy’s friends show, and it was awful; but before anything else I must tell you that it was remarkably attractive—and clever—the gallery was entirely painted in pink and the floor was covered with sparkly pink dust, so it was really nice, cute, kitsch and pink! Everything was pink, tons of things, a really big exhibition at a decent gallery named Garash. BUT, where was the concept, idea or whatever the hell inspired this exhibition? Besides being pink—I hope they didn’t think that was the concept—was there anything else that could have been wittily said with those same objects? I read the sheet that was presented with a text from Maurycy about the exhibition. Curiously, that same sheet could help you as a guide—while walking thru the gallery-—to refute each conceptual suggestion and also feel sorry for the amazingly low acnowledgement of a basic theory about, for example, war aesthetics. Speaking specifically, one of the pieces by Maurycy was a model of an army tank, painted—of course-—in pink, and placed inside a translucent bubble, filled like sand with small pink beads. I couldn’t find a straight explanation or even some vague approach to an argument about ANY of the pieces that were inside there. Strangely, the exhibition had several curators, but God knows what they were doing, cause I’m not sure if this is MY mistake but I thought that one of the functions of a curator was to present the artists’ work to the public, and not only put it together, as if we were dealing with colorful and pretty toys. There’s something else I need to say in fairness. Most people emerged enchanted; I also saw people pissed off, not getting a damn thing about it, but I think that almost everyone who was there, came out lovin’ it, loving the pink cliché and embracing the almost romantic experience. But, I’ll go back to that pink page that tried in vain to explain as the motivation of the show; the premise was something like this: black and gray are masculine and stereotyped colors, historically and worldwide, so the artists are all going to reinterpret and basically alter the connotation of pink as a color related with superficial, corny and almost exclusively feminine and gay stuff. They attempt to do that by showing us other stereotype. It’s obvious they didn’t notice the irony with pink, such as: TONS of pink vaginas—abstract they call it, but obvious and as boring as a horror flick—lots of pink girls, pink Japanese girls talking about sex, what else? What else do Japanese girls talk about? Pink toys, pink flowers, pink flowers covered with semen, pink swastikas. Sounds familiar? Soooo Original. Is it so complicated to read one chapter of a random book about contemporary aesthetics and write anything! something about it so people can at least think that you tried? So...what else can I tell you? Did you see all the sponsors? They even had pink tequila! So, the exhibition was awful? No, it had a huge visual impact, and I was entertained looking at the small toys and striped pink walls. Were the pieces meaningless and worthless? No, the pieces, if placed in a well-analyzed context and having THE ARTIST THEMSELVES understanding how their art acts as symbols, ARE worthy. But in THAT context and with THAT lame and refutable explanation, they are worthless. They are pretty, but that’s all. What’s more important? To have a happy audience that never understood shit about anything but was charmed by the visual impact of your exhibition? Or to have an amused audience that came out charmed by the show, but that ALSO understood and got confronted by the WELL CONSTRUCTED concept and meaning of what you were trying to communicate? I know I can go to the supermarket to see pretty plastic objects; I don’t need a gallery, or some curator to show me that. By the way, Maurycy was wearing the strangest suit ever, like something from outer space, he looked like...he was milking cows at his farm up in the hills and then he put on his best home made pink suit and went to a party that night at the hippest gay club in town. So you have my version, enjoy it.

After being posted on my blog, 22 hours later, a new comment appeared:

“PINK WASN’T DEAD, YOU KILLED IT, BASTARD!!!” 1 coment -Mostrar entrada original Annie dijo...

Perhaps it was a man’s interpretation of what a world led by women would look like. If so, they got it wrong, because we would not be talking about sex (guy thing), there would be no tanks (another guy thing), and no need for the semen because we would have figured out how to reproduce without them. 11:48 AM

01.02.2007