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Marx & Zavattero

September 10 - October 18, 2009

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77 Geary Street 2nd Floor San Francisco, CA 94108
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Beautiful, Dirty, Dirty, Rich Bernie Madoff, Youre a Giant Prick, 88" x 20" x 40" rhino head taxidermy form, auto paint, & mixed media, 2008-09
Opening Reception for the Artist: Thursday, September 10, beginning at 7:00 PM Marx & Zavattero present David Hevel’s second gallery solo exhibition Beautiful, Dirty, Dirty, Rich. Creating a funky boutique vibe, Hevel will display his new sculptures amongst gaudy pink Styrofoam columns, pink and white stenciled wall decor, and an array of mirrored pedestals and gold leaf frames. The effect will be a Victorian boudoir of sorts, in which his new series of porcelain monkeys clad in handmade couture, and wall-mounted and floor taxidermy sculptures take center stage. Known for mining the closets of art history – 18th and 19th C. porcelain, religious, and secular Old Master paintings – and all matter of kitsch, floral, and decorative arts, this show promises to be a devilish romp. Similar to hip-hop artists sampling previously created music or splicing together clips of video, David Hevel’s sculptures synthesize disparate artifacts from our lives to create a fresh, open-ended narrative. Hevel’s work is satire and critiques not only the detritus produced by the media industry, but the consumers of these products as well. Hoping to reveal the absurdity of American consumerism, global economy, and the chaos of mass media, Hevel juxtaposes mid-American aesthetics of taxidermy and floral arrangement with the gossip, glamour and glitz of Hollywood royalty. Featured will be a menacing and ribald “portrait” of Bernie Madoff as a life sized four-foot long, black gloss rhino head, bedazzled with rhinestones and dog collar. The forever fated Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett are depicted as two wall-mounted “trophy” unicorns nuzzling together, and another duet of sorts will be the pairing of the large-scale sculptures The Ascension of Saint Angelina and The Adoration of Brad Pitt. Angela Jolie is deified as a bejeweled baboon gazing towards the heavens atop a beaded pumpkin, swathed in heavenly butterflies, while the adoring chimpanzee of Pitt supplicates her with outstretched arms. Here, Hevel turns to religious metaphor to highlight the irony of Jolie and Pitt’s newfound sainthood status in the media. Also on view will be a series of small porcelain monkeys outfitted in Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter hand-designed couture collections inspired by contemporary designers Alexander McQueen, Dior, and Jean Paul Gautier. Referencing 18th and 19th Victorian and German porcelain, Hevel’s menagerie of self styled monkey “supermodels” pay homage to his youth where he grew up surrounded by his family’s collection of decorative porcelain figurines and animals. The layering of themes in Hevel’s work mirrors the layering of materials used to build his sculptures. His constructions draw readily from floral design and combine a myriad of faux flowers, glass beads, tassels, costume jewels, taxidermy forms, and offbeat craft products that are painstakingly pieced together. Hevel’s use of such synthetic materials suggests the hyper-artificiality of the subject matter itself. His work shifts seamlessly between the grotesque and the beautiful, suggesting influences as far ranging as artist Jeff Koons, homemaker Martha Stewart, and the Baroque and Rococo decorative arts. Hevel’s work has recently been featured in several group exhibitions including Tales of Wonder and Woe: Fable and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Art, Castle Gallery, New Rochelle, NY; What Are You Laughing At?, ArtCenter/South Florida, Miami, FL; and Natural Blunders, deSaisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA, among many others. Solo exhibitions include Schroeder Romero, New York, NY; PULSE New York; The Peeler Art Center at DePauw University, Greencastle, IN; Byron Cohen Gallery, Kansas City, MO; and the upcoming This Sugar is Raw at San Francisco Recycling & Disposal. Hevel received his MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts (now CCA), San Francisco, in 2002 and was a recipient of an Artadia Award in 2007, as well as a Murphy & Cadogan Fellowship Award from the San Francisco Foundation in 2001. His work has been written about in The New York Times, Art in America, artforum.com, SF Weekly, Beautiful Decay, Artweek, Miami New Times, Kansas City Star, KQED.org, and SFGate.com, among other publications. Hevel is currently an artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Recycling & Disposal and lives in Oakland, CA.