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30/1/2010

Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and Daniel Albrigo

Renwick Gallery, New York

Renwick Gallery is pleased to present Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is... A LOVE STORY, a split exhibition of new works by Daniel Albrigo and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. A catalogue documenting the exhibition, with an introductory text by Banks Violette, will be published by AndPress Publishing on the occasion.

The exhibition Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is... A LOVE STORY takes as its catalyst the power of synchronicity. Some bonds go beyond the accepted, expected and understood limits of collaboration. It is a common occasion for two individuals to allocate a respective portion of themselves to be shared, however it is only during the rarest of occasions that two bodies can blend so explosively as to leave no trace of their being discreet from the other. Dream of a venn diagram where the two circles don't simply overlap at their centers, but orbit around one another, creating ongoing eclipses with the immeasurable dimensionality of two mirrors staring into one another.

During Genesis Breyer P-Orridge's four decade long revolutionary path through the underground and the avant- garde what has emerged as one of h/er most outstanding and ongoing subjects is the malleability of forms and formats. P-Orridge has developed a virtuosity for collage to take advantage of this pervasive malleability. Breyer P- Orridge collages life and society in all scales from the micro material of the printed image to the macro ontological classifications of gender. The supposedly a priori motifs of taste and decorum, the cliché hierarchies of power, and the trite logic of composition have all been previously arranged according to an order that is arbitrary at best and oppressive at worst. Breyer P-Orridge has taken courageous and experimental leaps to redistribute these sequences and sensibilities of culture.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is... A LOVE STORY is the latest realization of Breyer P-Orridge's ongoing exploration. Two synchronicities are in play here; that between Genesis Breyer P-Orridge and h/er partner in art and life; h/er other half; h/er vision and h/er view; the late Lady Jaye Breyer and also that between Breyer P-Orridge and h/er fellow artist Daniel Albrigo. Lady Jaye Breyer and Genesis Breyer P-Orridge began a collaboration in 1993 which focused on PANDROGENY; their two identities were merged through plastic surgery, hormone therapy, cross dressing and altered behavior in an effort to deconstruct the fiction of the self, each moving to resemble the other. Breyer P-Orridge, the cross-pollinated name of this endeavor, has continued even after Lady Jaye's untimely death in 2007, conveying that even mortality can be reconsidered in the strangely unique syntax of love.

As part of h/er ongoing project towards reformulating the attributes and jurisdiction of separate categories, Breyer P- Orridge's has had all of h/er teeth removed, then cast in gold and finally had the treasured substitution installed in place of the original. The gesture is emblematic of Breyer P-Orridge's efforts because it demonstrates the severity of h/er commitment to shatter walls between inside and outside, real and artificial, ornamentation and utility. Essential in this regard was the work of Dr. Mitchell Rubenstein, the extraordinary dentist who steadily merged science and alchemy over the last ten years, going beyond the call of duty to understand and support the artist's vision.

The painstaking and personal act of Breyer P-Orridge's casting and replacing teeth, has itself become a powerful subject in the hands of the artist Daniel Albrigo. Albrigo has painted stunningly realistic portraits of Breyer P- Orridge's cast teeth. He uses the mannerisms and techniques of the old masters to depict his definitively mis-cast subject; the care and refinement of Albrigo's brushstroke accentuates and calls attention to those same qualities as manifested in Breyer P-Orridge's sculpting of h/er physical self and identity. Closely cropped and lush, the paintings force the viewer into a contemplative gaze over the tenacious and gaudily ornamented orifice and also the cast and then cast aside dental prosthetics. The paintings are both ode and exposé. They emphasize Breyer P-Orridge's willingness to reverse roles and perform the self as a representational subject.

Alongside Albrigo's paintings will be new sculptural objects, assemblages, photo-works and jewelry by Breyer P- Orridge. These works bring together diverse talismanic objects and materials, evoking contradictory impulses of terror and the sublime, destruction and sex, the body and landscape, beasts and beauty, nature and industry, and most often the tokens of bourgeois civilization alongside the tools of its decomposition. The resultant cabinets of curiosity hardly tame their contents, rather the meaning of the parts are only further radicalized based on the configuration of the whole. The very distinction between polar categories are once again shuffled and shifted. At one and the same time the materials in h/er sculptures refer back to their previous lives as cogs in the down-stream machinery of society but also become something new, something freed from purpose and ready to endanger, excite or alienate. The more you look at the sculptures the stranger they become, much like Albrigo's paintings and Breyer P-Orridge h/erself.

The exhibition at Renwick Gallery will also mark the premier of a new editioned artwork created by Breyer P- Orridge. The artwork takes the form of a substantial silver ring with a gilded cast of the artist's lower left molars in the place of a traditional stone. The rings are created with Alice Genese, a respected jeweler whom is also the Bass player from Psychic TV. The ring can be sized to order and comes in an overall edition of 23. A sample ring will be displayed in the gallery and for more information or to order, contact info@renwickgallery.com.

The duration and timing of the exhibition at Renwick Gallery are also sites of significance for Breyer P-Orridge. The show will run for 23 days, based on the mystical power of the number as taught to the artist many years ago by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs. The exhibition will culminate on Monday February 22, 2010 in a birthday celebration of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge who will be turning 60 y-Eras old. On the occasion the New York based artist Amir Mogharabi will perform. Throughout the duration of the exhibition additional events and performances will occur at the gallery including a reading performance of the Psychick Bible by Breyer P-Orridge. Further information about these events will be announced through out the duration of the exhibition.

Additional and vital synchronicity was also forged between Breyer P-Orridge and h/er assistant Matt Whitley, whose contributions remain invaluable.

Daniel Albrigo was born in Pomona, California in 1982 and currently lives and works in New York City. He is a respected tattoo artist and has exhibited his paintings and drawings in a two person exhibition at Redletter 1 Gallery, Tampa Fl and in group exhibitions at Riverside Museum of Art, Riverside, CA; Ghost Print Gallery, Richmond VA; Last Rites Gallery, New York; Art Basel 2008, Miami FL; La Luz De Jesus Gallery, Hollywood CA; Copro Naso Gallery, Santa Monica CA; Gallery DBA 256, Pomona CA. Albrigo also curated the exhibition Be Here Now at Canvas LA Gallery in Los Angeles. A catalogue of his work Life Death Letters and Numbers was recently published with an introductory text by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge. An interview with the artist conducted by Banks Violette will appear in the next issue of the Swiss periodical Sang Bleu.
Genesis BREYER P-ORRIDGE was born in Manchester, England in 1950. S/he was a member of the Kinetic action group Exploding Galaxy/Transmedia Exploration from 1969-1970. S/he conceived of and founded the seminal British performance art group Coum Transmissions in 1969 and was the co-founder of Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and the spoken word/ambient music performance group Thee Majesty. Throughout Genesis' long career, s/he has worked and collaborated with William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Derek Jarman and Dr. Timothy Leary, among others. H/er art has been exhibited internationally, including recent exhibitions at Deitch Projects, Mass MOCA, Centre Pompidou, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, Barbican Museum, the Swiss Institute and White Columns, amongst others. Upcoming exhibitions will include a solo exhibition at Rupert Goldsworth in Berlin, a keynote address at the Erotic Screens Conference, Centre for Public Culture and Ideas at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia and a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in March. H/er archive was recently acquired for the permanent collection of the Tate Britain Museum.

Opening Reception on January 31, 5-8pm

Renwick Gallery
45 Renwick Street New York, NY 10013
Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm
Admission free

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