Unauthorized Collaboration Without Marcel Duchamp, Dada, Museum of Modern Art, New York, June 18 - September 11, 2006, Postcard, paint, 4-1/4 x 6in.
domogallery is please to announce Curt Ikens: Unauthorized Collaborations as the next exhibition at domogallery at 447 Springfield Avenue, Summit, NJ. This will be the artist’s first solo show with domogallery.
The new body of works by Curt Ikens is the tragically humorous “unauthorized collaborations” – each making a blatantly false claim of collaboration with another artist. Created covertly by Ikens, these pseudo-collaborations are collages/constructions made from art exhibition promotional materials collected at the time and place of the other artist’s recent showing.
By transforming the artistic vocabulary of the targeted artist into an undermining force, and then directing that force back on the work itself, Ikens practices a kind of artistic jujitsu. In the end, the portion of the artwork resembling the other artist’s handiwork is overwhelmed by the audacity of Ikens “collaborative” contributions.
Like sites of disaster, all the works are conspicuously emblazoned with the cautionary color safety yellow. Ikens confesses, “the taint of envy in these strange, imagined interferences with the course of art-history-in-the-making – an envy of admiration, yet manifest as malice”. In an insult-to-injury quasi-manic episode, each work is repeatedly tagged with Ikens’ signature - like some bestial alpha male zealously urine-marking in claim of new territory.
Curt Ikens: Unauthorized Collaborations will be on view at domogallery, 447 Springfield Avenue, Summit, New Jersey 07901, 908-608-0079, August 1 through September 2. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 – 5.