PROBLEM

Post-Fordism, the pressure to work all the time, to excel at multiple art world roles, to have the ability to don many different hats in the quest for exposure in the belief that it will lead to adequate compensation for artistic labor.

COME ON/Marketing Email

Dear Friends, Former Lovers, and Everybody Else: Not since the six months I spent meditating on Derrida’s concept of the pharmakon in the Himalayas have I been this distraught. Art making, the most powerful drug I’ve encountered in twenty years of partying, threatens to undo everything I have worked towards in a very public manner. I guess I’ve been through worse. The violent death of my father in a bicycle accident caused in part by the negligence of a subsidiary of Halliburton and nursing a dying mother, who’d never smoked a cigarette through lung cancer both immediately come to mind. So why is this performance about the pressure to perform so daunting? Or, did I just answer my own question? Perhaps. I hope to see you on the evening of September 9th where I’ll inhabit a human sized version of Mattel’s 1997 “Gallery Opening” Barbie outfit and threaten to collapse under the weight of wearing too many hats (artist/critic/curator/dealer/collector/gallery/exhibition/gallery district). All items by artists on my body are for sale (Clutch Gallery not included). I’m starting my walk around 6PM in the West Loop. Please follow my Twitter feed @60percentH2O for updates about which galleries I’ll be attending and for reviews of the shows.

			XO, “Gallery Opening” Barbie

PERFORMANCE

For the fall opener of gallery season in Chicago I wore a human sized Barbie outfit to openings in the West Loop of Chicago as “Gallery 60% H2O,” which refers to the approximate amount of water the human body contains. Several artists created the pieces of the outfit/group show and I carried Meg Duguid’s “Clutch Gallery,” a miniature self-contained exhibition space, as a purse. I walked in flesh colored custom made Barbie heels, tweeted hair-brained reviews of shows and promoted the exhibition on my body. That night I achieved the impossible, if only for a couple of hours, I was the gallerist, curator, artist, exhibition, gallery, gallery district, and critic and all at the same time.