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Indepth Arts News:
"Ike Udo - Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum"
2008-12-11 until 2009-01-24
Stux Gallery
New York, NY,
USA United States of America
Stux Gallery is pleased to announce "Paris Hilton: Fantasy and Simulacrum", an exhibition of new paintings, sculptures and photographs by the New York based Nigerian born, American artist, publisher and style icon, Iké Udé. Through a myriad of modalities, Udé laments and celebrates the rise of celebrity journalism and the ensuing media phenom that is Paris Hilton, America's very own Princess Diana. "Fame comes in all manner of forms: There's Paris Hilton kind of fame, there's Madonna, Mahatma Ghandi, Hitler, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Al Capone, Coco Chanel, Gorge Bush and Obama... There's no single ethical standard or moral yardstick by which to judge or measure the quality of fame-if there is, the line between fame and notoriety in our contemporary framework, is virtually a blur."- Iké Udé
The premise of Fantasy and Simulacrum is a saucy, sexual, erotic conversation and engagement between the artist's alter ego, Visconti, and Paris Hilton and is both a reference and departure to "Beyond Decorum," Udé's seminal conceptual photographic series of clothing and shoes paired with titillating text appropriated from adult personal advertisements. Utilizing a cacophony of visual material culled from gossip blogs, porn sites, wallpaper samples, fashion/lifestyle magazines and film, Udé's new hybrid pictorial style employs free association and an absurd sense of humor in rendering works that manage to be both whimsical and monumental, confusing our conception of historical fact with salacious artistic interpretation. Udé expresses his fondness for fantasy and kink, making reference to both his own complex cultural narrative, as well as to society's susceptibility to the cyclical and sometimes ironically amusing demands of hot trends.
Biography: Iké Udé was born in Lagos, Nigeria and moved to the States in the 1980s. He lives and works in New York City. His artwork is in the permanent collections of the Solomon Guggenheim Museum, New York, and the Smithsonian National Museum, Washington DC. Udé is the founder and publisher of aRUDE magazine, a quarterly devoted to art, culture, style and fashion. He is the author of Style File: The World's Most Elegantly Dressed, a comprehensive monograph just released by Harper Collins.
IMAGE
Ike Udo
Paris Hilton: Mirror Suites (detail), 2008
Acrylic, gel medium, burnout and paper, on multiple antique/vintage mirrors
Courtesy of Stux Gallery, New York.
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