Hurts So Good
Stills from Exhibition.
Co-curator/Co-organizer
November, 2009
Rowan University Art Gallery
Glassboro, NJ
"Hurts So Good" is a video exhibition that explores the various ways artists use video to confront culture and traditions in America. Works celebrate, critique, and satirize representations of American culture and traditions related to sex, religion, politics, economics, technology, popular culture, media, and family. Rowan University Art Gallery presents "Hurts So Good," a video exhibition that confronts culture and traditions in America. The works celebrate, critique and satirize representations of American culture and traditions related to sex, religion, politics, economics, technology, popular culture, media, and family.
Curated by FPA faculty Jenny Drumgoole and Jennie Thwing, this exhibit features 11 acclaimed artists from the region and across the country: Skip Arnold (Los Angeles), Ronnie Cramer (Philadelphia), Chris Crocker (Los Angeles), Kara Crombie (Philadelphia), George Kuchar (San Francisco), J. Makary's (Philadelphia), Chris Miner (New York City), Laurel Nakadate (New York City), Mika Rottenberg (New York City), Sarah Stuve (New York City) and Jenny Vosacek (Belmont, CA).
Arnold's Marks is rooted in the tradition of extreme body based work and shows the artist throwing himself at a wall until he finally collapses; Cramer's Highway Amazon tells the story of Christine Fetzer, a female bodybuilder who travels the country wrestling men on beds in hotel rooms; Crocker's series of short-form, self-directed monologues on pop culture, politics, sexuality and celebrity have made him an internet celebrity on YouTube; Crombie's Portraits focuses on the physical subtleties of human relationships; Kuchar's Vault of Vapors is a wistful entry from his weather diary series in Oklahoma; Makary's Wanna Kiss Myself features a dozen Philadelphia performers in a colorful, enclosed world creating a film as hybridized memories; Miner's Auction is a performance piece using phrases heard growing up in the Baptist church to create an auction from behind the pulpit; Nakadate's Oops turns the tables on middle-aged men who try to pick her up and documents them coming home with her to dance to a Britney Spears song; Rottenberg's Time and a Half shows a young woman daydreaming and staring at a poster of a tropical island view, which is not exactly what it seems; Stuve's My Dead Brain is an escape from reality set in a fantastical wonderland from which the heroine emerges again and again, each time with a new identity; and Vosacek's Caregiver Challenge follows the artist's eccentric and animated mother as she answers the questions in a simulated online computer test.
