| Roberto Cuoghi | Goodgriefies |
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| Michele
Maccarone on Roberto Cuoghi Robert Cuoghi's art practice addresses cultural and social estrangement. In his self-imposed outsider position, Cuoghi's marginalization is extreme. He grew his fingernails into elongated spirals that negated his ability to function normally. He wore glasses that inverted everything he saw, rendering him unable to make sense of the visual world. He gained weight, dyed his hair white and dressed in his father's clothes; even more, he studied his father and learned his gestures and habits in order to take on this new persona. This performance became a daily practice, a living sculpture with no commodified art product except for some scant documentation, such as the odd photo. It exists primarily as a story passed by word of mouth. Cuoghi claims no space with his performances. He demands nothing of his audience as he proceeds with his artwork alone every moment of every day, prematurely aged, uncomfortably overweight—an extreme endurance test. During this period, Cuoghi made Goodgriefies, an animated video. At the very beginning of the video, he appears as a pastische of himself and his father, as an old man in a grey suit wearing round spectacles. The video itself explores the complications of generational identity and relationship through the medium of familiar cartoon characters. Characters appropriated from Loony Tunes, Scooby Doo, The Flinstones, and Peanuts are montaged and combined with those from more contemporary series such as The Simpsons, Beavis and Butthead, and South Park. Just as Cuoghi has intensified his genetic relationship to his father by collapsing the temporal space between them, Goodgriefies takes figures like Charlie Brown and Bart Simpson, one the child of the other, and forces them to co-exist as peers, at the same moment in time. Exhibition @ ApexArt, New York postmedia.net |
Since 1996, apexart has worked with gallerists to present its Summer Program. Although the format has changed slightly over the years, the aim has always been to tap into the energy of the commercial scene. In the past the program featured separate exhibitions for each dealer ("444" and "222"). This year, all the artists will be featured in one exhibition. For our 2003 Summer Program, apexart invited Katy Siegel, assistant professor of art history and criticism at Hunter College and Artforum contributing editor, to select two New York gallerists to each invite two artists whom they do not represent, and who they felt were under recognized. Ms. Siegel selected Mitchell Algus—who selected Kaz Oshiro and John Dogg—and Michele Maccarone—who selected Roberto Cuoghi and Nate Lowman. apexart |