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Dash Snow / Sash Dnow

"God Spoiled A Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth In Yer Mouth"

peres projects - chinatown

969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles, CA 90012

September 22, 2007 - November 10, 2007

Dash Snow is a lifestyle artist but moreover Dash Snow is a lifestyle. For him any question about is there, or isn’t there, a separation between art and life is a non-question. One look at his braided strawberry blonde beard and slight, elfin figure and it is certain that he’s an artist who lives in the world of his works. His exhibition currently on view at Peres Projects, God Spoiled a Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth in Yer Mouth, is a look into that world.

In the first of Peres Projects' two spaces on Chung King Road, Snow has Polariods, out of focus photographs and collages that are vaguely psychedelic, and / or totemic, and / or dada and / or new age. He cuts out headlines from his beloved New York Post and so takes on the subjects that they take on. In Snow's collages it seems that the hope is that the Post headlines and image combinations are somehow recontextualized in a way that gives them something new. Unfortunately they don't seem new but more nostalgic for a time when they might have been. The gallery itself is clean, white and so bright you might think you are skiing in Aspen for a long weekend. Nearly all of the works in the first gallery are under glass and beautifully framed which, given statements like, “I did my first line of coke when I was 13 years old and I’ve been partying every night and taking pictures ever since,” are really quite shocking (the frames and glass I mean). But then, this is not the “main” space I am told. I follow a gentleman who is looking for Dash Snow’s “video premiere” into Peres Projects' main gallery, which is just down the road.

It looks like this: the walls, floor and ceiling are painted black. Black plastic tarp is covering the windows. On the left wall there is a large, graphic collage of one to two word headlines mounted on a traffic yellow board. On the right is a black and white collage of a young blonde woman engaged in a sex act with another woman and a penis. Directly in front of you as you enter the gallery there is a ziggurat constructed out of cinderblocks that have been spray painted black on the sides. On the platform at the top there is a large light box illuminating the space. Mounted under the glass is an ink jet print covered with the artist’s semen that reads, “How much talent does it take to come on the New York Post, anyway?" The quote which initially struck me as something of a non sequitur, is in fact a direct reference to a profile that Ariel Levy did on Snow and his fellow “legendary” downtown artist friends. In the article, Levy calls out Snow for, “being a cop-taunting, Saddam Hussein–fetishizing petty criminal” as well as “being so enamored with penises and what comes out of them.” In her article, Levy then poses the question, “How much talent does it really take to come on the New York Post, anyway?” Snow’s response? We can assume that it’s “dripping down” on everyone in Peres Projects, as his first ever super-8 film, which shows Dash and his friends in what appears to be a sort of circle jerk operation, is projected on the ceiling.

Downstairs in the basement there are more photographs; of a cross, of a girl with a poetic or provoked impulse to buy all of the roses at the deli and take them back to her tiny east village apartment, of some penis graffiti, of a guy, of a pretty pregnant woman standing on the edge of a bathtub, of some drugs, of a toilet bowl and those drugs possibly going down it. Again, the shock of those beautiful frames.

So finally, if Dash Snow lives in this world, and his work is part and parcel of this world, where does it begin and end? What is the frame and who is crafting it. Is it Dash or is it someone else? Is it under glass? Is it made of Alder? Is God Spoiled a Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth in Yer Mouth a show about taking revenge? What is it about then when there are a slew of misogynist and anti-Semitic comments posted on Snow’s blog (http://irakny.com/blog/groupie-reporter-gets-fartsy-downtown) following the publication of Levy’s article? It seems that if Dash makes an entire exhibition dedicated to the quote than it’s certainly all in the world. What about his gig modeling for the AC Adriano Goldschmied Jeans campaign? Does that count? Do the behind-the-scenes Polariods?

When John Cage talked about lessening the distinction between art and life he was essentially talking about then Zen of picking mushrooms. He was saying that picking mushrooms and composing a piece of music are each essentially equal creative activities. Does it count the same when Dash Snow masturbates repeatedly and comes all over a gallery in a kind of perverted adolescent revenge? Is the distinction simply between an act that is essentially Zen and one that is essentially vindictive? Perhaps it is. When the artist and the work are in a world then it’s the world that you are considering as a proposal. What if the world was thus? So in Snow’s case…what if the world was thus?

(*Images, from top to bottom: Dash Snow, God Spoiled a Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth in Yer Mouth, September 22 - Novemeber 10, 2007, Peres Projects, Los Angeles, Untitled, 2007, collage, 17 3/4 x 23 3/4 in, Courtesy of Peres Projects, Los Angeles Berlin; Dash Snow, God Spoiled a Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth in Yer Mouth, September 22 - Novemeber 10, 2007, Peres Projects, Los Angeles, Untitled (Penis Envy), 2007, Installation; light box with inkjet print drenched in cum of hustlers and others, 8mm film on DVD, (approx, 10 minutes, looped)107 x 147 x 55 in, Courtesy of Peres Projects, Los Angeles Berlin; Dash Snow, God Spoiled a Perfect Asshole When He Put Teeth in Yer Mouth, September 22 - Novemeber 10, 2007, Peres Projects, Los Angeles, Untitled, 2007, digital c-print, 30 x 27 7/10 in, Courtesy of Peres Projects, Los Angeles Berlin.)

Posted by Nancy Lupo on 10/13/07

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