Shizaru Gallery Presents:
BAD FOR YOU
October 10th – November 23, 2012
London, England
“Health of the Planet #563” 2010, carbon ink jet & silk screen, 29”x24” private London collection
As the international community flocks to London for Frieze, Shizaru is delighted to host BAD FOR YOU, an exhibition curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody featuring sixty-eight contemporary and established artists primarily from America. Taking inspiration from its eponymous title, BAD FOR YOU highlights the unwavering relationship between art and vice, displaying the human relationship with what is “bad” through issues like self destruction, drugs, alcoholism, gambling, materialism, vanity, and cigarettes. A title that is at once humorous and grim the exhibition avoids judgment, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions.
Artists explore these many themes through various moralistic viewpoints. Some works celebrate, disregard and revel in what is seen as being ?Bad? whilst others raise alarm and aim to forewarn the consequence of a life of decadence. Artists celebrate the excitement of experimentation, and the pleasure that comes with doing what is “Bad for You” such as Fred Tomaselli, who revels in his chosen vice; drugs, by making decorative patterns out of marijuana leaves and Liz Markus, whose humorously titled “Fuck it” evokes the carefree attitude of “doing itanyway”. These words written on raw canvas next to a whiskey bottle depicts that vertiginous moment, when one decides to carelessly down the rest of the bottle.
Many works explore human desire and the thrills that tempt us to rebel. The glitzy plethora of fortune is presented by Tony Oursler in his video installation “Bedazzled, Set for Life, Funky $5, Mother’s Day, Welcome to Vegas” which captures a stack of various gambling scratch-off cards, alluding to the temptations that can lure one into a rip of false promise.