Cody Cricheloe & SSION - Boy




Kathy Grayson & Meghan Coleman of The Hole, New York
Presents
BOY,
an exhibition by Cody Critcheloe and his band SSION
at
...Viktor Wynd Fine Art Inc

10th oct – November 14th

Private View Saturday 9th October 6-10pm
11 Mare street, E8 Wed – Sunday 12-7pm or by appointment

.
Viktor Wynd Fine Art are delighted to present Cody Critcheloe’s first U.K. show following on from recent solo shows at Peres Projects, Berlin & The Hole, New York.
The exhibition includes video, painting, drawing, and installation, the sum of these parts could be called “Kansas City Gone Wild” this big mess in the Midwest!
Cody Critcheloe is the mad mustachioed front man and creative ringleader of SSION: a band pronounced SHUN like the word PERCUSSION and FASHION and EXPLOSION. SSION is a collaborative confluence of creative kids in Kansas City. This queer punk performance art band just came out with BOY, a feature length movie documenting Cody’s life as a small town punk kid addicted to junk food dreaming of stardom who becomes a glamorous pop star with the help and hindrance of a gaggle of crazy dames. Archly witty and abounding and self-aware parody and pop-cultural collage, this film composites various music videos Cody made for SSION songs from 2007-2009 and links them together with mockumentary interviews, tour footage and cultural critique. Shitty green screen and handmade painted cardboard props abound, as do hot fags, hot dance moves, and smoking hot costumes by Peggy Noland.
Cody will be installing his exhibition like a sweet hangout zone and video lounge.

Stacey Switzer of Grand Arts writes “First things first! It’s SSION, pronounced “shun,” as in mission, fission, ambition—all
apt words to describe the gesamtkunstwerk or total work of art that is Cody Critcheloe
and the queer punk/performance/art band he invented ten years back as a high school
student in Lewisport, Kentucky. In the time since then, SSION has released 4 full-length
records, toured extensively throughout the United States, and enjoyed cult status among
fans and music writers who have lauded Critcheloe as everything from Out magazine’s
Hottest Artist of the Year to “Prince’s love child”i to the “one true master” of “high-concept
sleaze pop.”ii Despite gushy reviews from taste-making music blogs, indie magazines,
and the mainstream press, SSION has largely (and only until now, one hopes) escaped
the attention of the contemporary art world and critical art press. Here’s why, I suspect:
SSION is more fun than we think art should be. Critcheloe’s songs are catchy, not
abstract, and his visuals and live shows are crafted to appeal to more than an art-going
crowd. SSION could easily cross over to become a pop phenomenon—a potentiality (or
prophecy) which, in a stroke of self-reflexive genius, Critcheloe has already written into
the narrative arc of his work to date. The story of SSION is a raucous, louched up, campparody of Critcheloe’s own life, in which a small-town punk kid hooked on doughnuts
and pizza follows his dreams with razor focus to emerge as a svelte, smoky-eyed pop
star embraced by adoring crowds. And here, it seems, is the catch. While the annals
of art and film give us plenty of examples to draw on for theorizing the artist’s alter ego
(Duchamp’s Rrose Sélavy) the image-obsessed dandy (Warhol, Hirst, Koons, etc.) the
high-camp auteur (Waters, Jack Smith, and recently, Ryan Trecartin) and the concept
band (Yoko Ono, Tracy and The Plastics) the discourse is less prescribed for an artist
and musician who straddles all of these genres while aspiring to create work that actually
is pop in the broadest and most populist sense of the word.
SSION’s first feature-length film, BOY, affords a fresh opportunity to consider the band’s
work in the context of popular media and within the discourses of contemporary art. To
situate the work in this way is to necessarily highlight a degree of fluidity, criticality and
complexity in the work that far exceeds the typical coming-of-age movie or arena concert
experience. “

Time
09 October at 18:00 - 21 November at 05:30

LocationViktor Wynd Fine Art Inc
11 Mare Street, E8
London, United Kingdom


After Party @ Shabba Dabba Da Click here http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=153789754654104&ref=ts

With Cody at Wynd's StudioHelping pain the Exhibition