Fuck you, clown

Yesterday was the opening of PS1's enormous Greater New York show, which we attended in an eleventh-hour dispute settlement on the admission line, scissors ("see the show") trumping paper ("get drunk instead").

[Ed note: Turns out they were serving beer inside. Score!]

A lot could be said about this show: Its enormousness, its diversity of media (if not subject matter), its ambition. I will say this: It was fucking crowded.

I saw only a fraction of the galleries. Took some notes while I was there, which I'll try and translate as I have time.

On Robert Melee's installation: Clown Torture, John Waters.

His work took up an entire room, which was brightly lit and psychedically-painted, with plaster curtains and wood paneling. An entertainment center sat in the middle, laden with several TVs and photographs, which featured Melee's video and photography work. Anyhow.

Many of the videos featured a scary Karen-Black-looking woman in her 50s wearing clown make-up and little else. In one video, a hand paints her naked body. In another, she drinks a Miller High Life 40-oz. Naked.

I wasn't familiar with Melee until I looked him up this morning, and it turns out the woman in all his videos is his mom, which, of course, cranks the creep-factor into the stratosphere. Is narcissism driving her participation in his work, or is it something more malevolent? It was upsetting but oddly fun to watch, feeling that unpleasant back-of-my-bellybutton twinge the entire time.