"THE HAUNTS" NYU MFA THESIS EXHBITION, APRIL 2, 2013

Sam McKinniss and Rizzla, Untitled (detail: "Haunt Me"), 2000-2013, damaged photograph, black light and sound installation, photo: 4 x 6 inches.

It's with pleasure that I write to announce my MFA thesis exhibition opening on April 2, the capstone event to my studies at NYU, in the Steinhardt School: Department of Art and Art Professions. I will be presenting several new figurative and abstract paintings as well as Haunt Me, a collaborative sound installation made with New York based DJ/producer Rizzla (Fade to Mind), featuring our remix of Haunt Me performed by Sade, the best-selling British recording artist of all time. 

2013 NYU MFA Thesis Exhibitions I & II are hosted in 80WSE Gallery on the campus of New York University. 

80 Washington Square East, NY NY.

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:30 - 6pm. 

Group I: April 2 - 13. 

Opening Reception: April 2, 6-8pm

Sarah Feehily 

David Flaugher

Sam McKinniss

Lily Stockman

Group II: April 30 - May 11,

Opening Reception: April 30, 6-8pm

Michelle Young Lee

Davida Newman

Lee Perillo

James Woodward

Sam McKinniss, Untitled (SG), 2013, oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches.

THE HAUNTS:

         “He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not, don’t interrupt, my angel, he loves me, he loves me not, oh, heaven, heaven! He loves me! I may as well tell you, my darling, that the second big thing in my life has begun.”

         A most sinister ray of light suddenly fell upon the future.

         -Nancy Mitford, Love in a Cold Climate 1949.

Ecstasy refers to the empathogenic club drug as well as to the rapturous bliss caused by contemplating divine things, and a glow-stick necklace is a cute accessory to wear at a party but it also resembles a halo that’s slipped and fallen into the noose position. I went to a lot of raves as a teenager and recently the style has made a return to contemporary metropolitan nightlife, so that’s been fun for me. Painting and partying are two things I do to dazzle myself into the throes of a trance-like quest for advanced material pleasure.

I’m looking for a sinister ray of light. Like moonlight hitting narcissus’s pool, the soft glow emanating from a smartphone screen is incredibly seductive. The ghost paintings came to me because of another nighttime sensation, from the terrible impression that spending time in warehouses crowded with people dancing and taking MDMA felt something like being surrounded by the recently disembodied. Smoky, dimly lit rooms filled with kids on drugs have started to resemble the dynamics and movement of rapture depicted in the cloudy, cherubim and saint-filled ceilings by Tiepolo or Maulbertsch from the late 18^th century. The major differences are lighting and costume.

Sam McKinniss, BOYTWEETSWORLD, 2013, oil on canvas, 10 x 10 inches.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

 

 

INSTRUCTIONS FOR HOW TO GET AHEAD IN LIFE.

01.  You don’t need to read this and I didn’t need to write it.

02.  Give me a break.

03.  Do me a favor and go fuck yourself.

04.  Still reading? Okay fine, yeah why not, a bit of a masochist are we? Fuck you.

05.  Drop out of school.

06.  Smoke a cigarette in front of your mom.

07.  Try to estimate your net worth.

08.  Fuck around for a while but not for too long. Figure yourself out goddamnit, stop getting involved in embarrassing situations that require apologies. After you’ve sworn off the fucking around, discretely initiate an inappropriate affair and do everything in your power to keep it under control. Treat this as a learning experience. You will develop skills that can be applied to many other areas of your life.

09.  Stop listening to these sappy faggot singer-songwriters on acoustic guitar. That garbage belongs in the liberal arts college campus coffee shop and you should grow up. From now on you only listen to R&B.

10.  If you’re a white guy in a really fun rap group you should stop reading this right now and go think about what you’ve done.

11.  Read every word ever written by Nancy Mitford. Read all of her works of fiction and non-fiction, including every magazine article she wrote for various periodicals before hitting it big and focusing on French biographies.

12.  Would it kill you to shut up for five minutes?

13a. Begin the long journey toward understanding how little your point of view matters. Erase the false conditioning of early education that focused on inflating your sense of self-esteem. People with accurate senses of self-esteem adjust according to the fact that there are seven billion individuals on the planet competing for the same limited amount of esteem. Be sure to regularly lower your self-concept to a level below what you’ve been taught to think you deserve.

13b. Turn around and step-by-step start making a way back toward one day saying something relevant to add to the conversation. Recognize that the “conversation,” in whatever scope you interpret the word, be it party talk or something of more global significance, involves a forum of mostly idiotic people who have not adequately completed step 13a.

      14.Take stock of your physical looks. Honestly and pragmatically determine just what kinds of people you are most suited to take advantage of and never forget.

1          15. Be cavalier about taking on extra debt.

1          16. Laugh derisively whenever the opportunity arises.  

1          17. Weigh thyself.

1          18. Stop talking to people who are never going to help you get ahead in whatever pitiful life pursuit you’ve by now settled upon. Recognize the unfortunate capitalistic stratagem wherein you might be “getting ahead” and then try to determine what it is exactly you are “getting ahead” of and if this metaphor even applies.

1         19. Slap a FUPA.

2         20. Here’s a tip:

2         21. Never.

2         22.  

DEAREST CHARLES, --

     "I received one letter from Sebastian, a conspicuous object which was brought to me in my father's  presence one day when he was lunching at home; I saw him look curiously at it and bore it away to read in solitude. It was written on, and enveloped in, heavy late-Victorian paper, black-coroneted and black-bordered. I read it eagerly:--

BRIDESHEAD CASTLE 

WILTSHIRE

Dearest Charles, -

     I found a box of this paper at the back of a bureau so I must write to you as I am mourning for my lost innocence. It never looked like living. The doctors despaired of it from the start. 

     Soon I am off to Venice to stay with my papa in his palace of sin. I wish you were coming. I wish you were here.

     I am never quite alone. Members of my family keep turning up and collecting luggage and going away again, but the white raspberries are ripe. 

     I have a good mind not to take Aloysius to Venice. I don't want him to meet a lot of horrid Italian bears and pick up bad habits.

     Love or what you will.

S.

Evelyn Waugh, from Brideshead Revisited. 1944.

OCTOBER SIXTEENTH

Oscar Wilde, born on this day, 1854.

(Lithograph: Jim Dine, Study For the Rings on Dorian Gray's Hand, 1968)

Marie Antoinette, beheaded this day, 1793.

(portrait: Jean-Etienne Liotard, Marie Antoinette, daughter of Emperor Francis I and Marie Theresa of Austria, 1762.)

Angela Lansbury, born this day, 1925.

(Angela Lansbury appearing in the trailer for the 1945 film, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

THE BATH

left: David Park, Standing Male Nude in the Shower, 1955. right: Sam McKinniss, untitled, 2010. 

Pierre Bonnard, The Bath, second version, ca. 1925.

ROLE MODEL: FREDERICK THE GREAT

"The King changed Katte's sentence to that of death. He said Katte was not guilty of a mere juvenile escapade and that he was not an ordinary officer but an officer of the King's Guard. If such as he were unfaithful the whole structure of the State would be in peril. Katte had plotted with the rising sun. Should he get off lightly (a life sentence would only be for [King] Frederick William's life) the King would never be able to trust his Guards again. Justice must be done. Frederick William's severity was probably due to his conviction that [Prince] Frederick and Katte were lovers. Katte's father, the General, wrote to the King who replied: 'Your son is a canaille; so is mine; there is nothing we can do about it.' His grandfather, the Field Marshall, wrote and got a more sympathetic but negative reply. After that, Frederick William refused to see any more petitions. Katte's mother was dead. 

"On the morning of 6 November Frederick was woken up in his cell by an old officer and some soldiers, all in tears. He thought they had come to execute him and told them to get it over quickly. But then he learnt that Katte had been brought to Küstrin the day before and was about to be beheaded in the courtyard outside Frederick's window. The Prince broke down completely. He implored his gaolers to put off the execution on any excuse, to give him time to write to the King. He would offer to renounce his succession to the throne if only his friend could be saved. In vain. At the appointed hour Katte, in such a cheerful mood that it seems probable he thought the whole thing was play-acting, and that there would be a last-minute reprieve, was led under the Prince's window where 'he saw his beloved Jonathan'. Frederick blew him a kiss and said, in French, 'My dear Katte, I beg your pardon a thousand times.' 'Monseigneur,' said Katte with a low bow, 'there is nothing to forgive.' He then knelt down and prayed, and his head was cut off with a saber. Frederick was spared the dreadful sight --he had fallen in a dead faint."

-Nancy Mitford from her biography, Frederick the Great, 1970. 

Rereading this book now, trying to channel my hero Frederick (as depicted by my other hero Nancy). The figure of a beautiful and troubled teenage faggot who resists despair and matures into a powerful military ruler, feared throughout Europe for his skill on the battlefield as well as for stealing Voltaire's boyfriend.