Thurston Moore, Street Mouth
 

http://www.artcal.net/event/view/8/4378

Thurston Moore, Street Mouth
KS Art
Tribeca / Downtown
73 Leonard Street
212-219-9918
April 7 - May 12, 2007


Opening: Saturday, April 7, 6:00PM - 8:00PM
Web Site
Show Map

 

Thurston Moore


Although better known as the highly influential, experimental musician and co-founder of Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore has created a suite of photomontages which are razor-sharp visual equivalents of New York`s underground music and poetry scene around the late 1970s -- primarily joyful noisemakers circulating around CBGBs, Max's Kansas City and St. Marks Church.
Deploying collage techniques mashed up through a process described by the artist as "a kind of punk photoshop," these brand new works re-purpose vintage press clippings, press photos, and correspondence culled from Moore`s own archive. The results are a compelling series of personal, urban daydreams, cast from a fan's perspective. Familiar downtown faces include Iggy Pop, the Ramones, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Allan Ginsberg, and Kathy Acker. Screaming fields of disjointed imagery and deeply saturated colors collide and overlap, yielding tales from the pulp crypt of a not-to-be-forgotten New York underground. Only rarely do musicians translate their sonic talents so fittingly and so refreshingly into the domain of visual art.
I am basing the work on exercises I did as a teenager cutting out pictures from Rock Scene, Creem and Circus magazines and collaging them as an obsessive diarist. Doing this work now utilizing some kind of punk Photoshop method where I can actually drop myself and other referentials into the pieces has allowed me (starting) at age 47 to create an ongoing open-heart bio-historagophy. -Thurston Moore
Image from KS Art.

Ooh, I'm going to New York next week, so I'll have to stop by.

more images here:

http://www.ksartonline.com/tm.html

nice.

This explains why thurston has been buying all of those old school beat poetry, underground literature, rock n roll and punk rock magazines (Cream and related) on ebay as of recent...

Am I the only one that thinks these are a bit rubbish.

weird to include ads for online dating/networking sites ("true") amid all the (mostly) older stuff... whatever

no.

But guys, it's punk photoshop. Totally righteous, dude.

Yes.... apart from Toilet

Very cool rock on Moshe

if this was an art show by some unknown guy who wasn't thurston moore nobody would give it a second glance.

Yes, but thats irrelevant... the point IS that he is making and showing these collages...

negativism for the sake of it is so 80's!.

http://uncoolkids.com/reviews/2007/04/12/street-mouth/

It’s fitting that Thurston Moore’s first solo exhibition, Street Mouth, is debuting directly across from the Knitting Factory, at KS Art. As it turns out, the Sonic Youth front man brings the same DIY attitude to his art that made him famous at the experimental-rock club.
In his own words, Moore is “utilizing some kind of punk Photoshop method” to make collages that showcase New York’s underground scene. Cut-and-paste style, he rips up vintage newspapers from the 1970s, fastening them alongside press photos and overlapping those with personal letters, without ever making a piece look cluttered. News clippings that could have easily been dumped in yesteryear’s trash suddenly become Art in the hands of someone infatuated with counterculture New York.

“I am basing the work on exercises I did as a teenager cutting out pictures from Rock Scene, Creem and Circus magazines and collaging them as an obsessive diarist,” says Moore. You can almost picture a pre-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore, awkward and uncool, rifling through stacks of magazines for the latest pictures of his favorite bands in hopes of someday making his own rock-star dreams come true.
In large (24 X 21 1/4 inches) collages, Moore the devoted rock fan creates montages of Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, the Ramones, and Patti Smith. He pairs his rock iconography with images of Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Kathy Acker, nodding his head to the fact these downtown musicians hung out with the great writers and artists of their era. In places like St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and Max’s Kansas City, the subterranean elite united, riffing off each other’s work and inspiring each other.
Now, all grown up and famous, Moore says, “I can actually drop myself and other referentials into the pieces [and it] has allowed me (starting) at age 47 to create an ongoing open-heart bio-historagophy.” The Sonic Youth clippings and personal letters that Moore pastes into his collages do not feel self-promoting. Rather, they seem like another page torn out of the collage-filled diary from his teenage years. He comes across as posing to be cool but really being homespun dorky in his letters, writing, “I’m going to the rodeo. I just had some fried grits, bacon and root beer. . . . I’ve been doing some boss water skiing.” Even placing Sonic Youth within the context of such legends as the Velvet Underground seems more like a kid sticking his unknown, local band’s bumper sticker on his guitar case next to famous acts’ professional stickers than an egotistic display of stardom. Despite being one of the most influential bands on the scene, Sonic Youth and its front man seem to stay true to their roots.
Street Mouth opened last week to a large crowd. “His mom even came,” said Kerry Schuss, owner and director of KS Art. Schuss assures the readers of Uncool Kids that he did not choose to exhibit Moore’s work simply because he’s a famous musician. He likes Moore’s collages and gave him a solo show after first showing his work alongside Jocko Weyland in 2005.
By now, Moore is no stranger to the art world.
This past February Moore curated Free Living Papers, an exhibit focused on the same sort of magazines that inspired his own collages. Meanwhile, his wife and band mate, Kim Gordon, is an artist with her own exhibit, Dead Already, on display this month.
Street Mouth will be on display at KS Art (73 Leonard Street, NYC) through May 12. The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11:00 - 6:00. Admission is free.