FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Keith Mayerson: Horror Hospital Unplugged
Dominic McGill: Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
October 14 - November 12, 2011
Opening Reception: Friday, October 14, 6-8pm
Derek Eller Gallery is pleased to present two major works in our main gallery: Horror Hospital Unplugged by Keith Mayerson and Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Dominic McGill. From Mayerson’s evocation of youth, desire, and lurid nightlife to McGill’s manic mapping of the continuing global financial crisis, these masterfully drawn works combine image and text in contrasting narrative strategies with subversive and revelatory results.
For the first time ever on view, Keith Mayerson will present 225+ original drawings and the two cover paintings that compose Horror Hospital Unplugged, a pioneering graphic novel by Keith Mayerson and the writer Dennis Cooper about rock ‘n roll, queer love, and self-destruction. The ink drawings on paper (and some mixed media works) demonstrate a multitude of styles, a sensitivity to Cooper’s ideas, and an obsessive inventiveness. Originally published in 1996, Horror Hospital Unplugged was selected as one of Publisher’s Weekly’s “best fiction books of the year” (along with Margaret Atwood, John Updike, and others). Recently republished for a new generation by HarperPerennial, Horror Hospital Unplugged is a singular work inspired by Odilon Redon, Arthur Rimbaud, 90‘s indie rock, Japanese manga, and comic-book heros. The republished book will be for sale at the gallery, and there will be an official release,book-signing, and live comics reading on Wednesday, October 26th, from 6:30 to 7:30pm.
Keith Mayerson currently lives and works in New York City. Since 1993, his paintings and drawings have been shown internationally. His work resides in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, and the Corcoran Gallery, Washington, D.C.
Dominic McGill’s Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds is a mixed media work on paper that depicts the current global financial crisis through quotations from the ideologues that helped forged neo-liberal economic policies, notably Ayn Rand, Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers, and Henry Paulson. The work takes its title from a book by Charles Mackay from 1841, which describes various economic scams and bubbles in the past that preempt the present western economic system. The composition is dominated by a homunculus-like collaged-figure rendered in the palette of Hieronymous Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and conjures the blind and harum-scarum march of history and power. Also on view will be Whatever is Conscious Wears Itself Out, a sculpture based on the tradition of Vanitas, with quotations from Nietzsche, Debord, Foucault and others, and provokes the contemplation of death and thus the consequences of one’s (in)actions.
Dominic McGill lives and work in Brighton, England. His work has appeared in numerous gallery and museum exhibitions in the Untied States and Europe. His work resides in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Rose Art Museum, and the Davis Museum and Cultural Center.
Derek Eller Gallery is located at 615 West 27th Street, between 11th and 12th Avenues. Hours are Tuesday - Saturday from 11am - 6pm. For further information or visuals, please contact the gallery at 212.206.6411 or visit www.derekeller.com