Sundown Salon #25: SUPERM SALON

DATE: February 5th, 2006

FEATURING: Josh Lee, Benn Mendoza, Slava Mogutin, Dean Sameshima, Alex Segade & Malik Gaines, AVAF (Assume Vivid Astro Focus), Franko B, Dino Dinco, Andy Fair, Anthony Goicolea, Kris Canavan & Dominic Johnson, Sebastian Meunier, Billy Miller, Superm, Scott Treleaven, Nicholas Wagner

A special superhole weekend of salon boy events curated by Slava Mogutin & Brian Kenny

>>> LIVE MUSIC PERFORMANCE >>> ALEX SEGADE & MALIK GAINES

>>> BENN MENDOZA with his acrobats & contortionists from the HOT BOY CIRCUS >>>

>>> Slide show featuring the works of SUPERM and others >>>

>>> Zines by DEAN SAMESHIMA and SUPERM >>>

>>> Cake and pastry sculpture in the dome with interactive culinary performance by JOSH LEE >>>

>>> Photoshoots throughout the day >>>

>>> Poetry reading by SLAVA MOGUTIN >>>

>>> VIDEO PROGRAM >>>

FRANKO B (London) > Video Lecture
ANTHONY GOICOLEA (New York) > Short videos
SUPERM (New York) > Short videos
ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS (Brazil) > Music videos
NICOLAS WAGNER (New York) > Wrestling video
KRIS CANAVAN & Dominic Johnson (London) > “Cold Song”
BILLY MILLER (of Straight To Hell, New York) > “Tom Cruise Loves Women”
DINO DINCO > Short Video
SEBASTIEN MEUNIER (Paris) > “Body Pack”
Scott TRELEAVEN (Toronto) > “Salivation Army”
ANDY FAIR (New York) > “Plushie Schwartz Does Fire Island”

ARTISTS BIOS

ASSUME VIVID ASTRO FOCUS is both the pseudonym of a New York based Brazilian artist and the title given to the artist's wide-ranging aesthetic project. In avaf's work the sources are blended together, fused, overlapping, contaminated and contaminating. The generous nature of the work extends to the audience who are likewise invited into and absorbed by the work, thus implicating them in avaf's wider project.

FRANKO B is a London-based Italian artist, known for his radical body modification performances and multimedia installations.

KRIS CANAVAN was born in Northern Ireland in 1980 and now lives and works in London. He has been creating work across video, photography, performance, painting and installation. His work has been presented in the UK and internationally. The following is his artist statement:

Amor es dolor
The betrayal of the heart by a wandering mind
The death of a loved one I neglected
Alienated, Surrounded by many, but known by none
I'm damned if do, & fucked if I don't
A wild stab in the dark against a better judgement
An action born of frustration
In remembrance of...
Momentary reflection
Symmetry gone awry
An attack against the institution combined with self-sacrifice and an alchemical twist
Desire, love & life...?
Submissive tendencies vs. empowerment or just plain recklessness?
Pulled in every fucking direction but too lazy to act & too stubborn to listen
Question: Why....?
Answer: L....?

DINO DINCO was raised by a family of fighting chickens in rural Pennsylvania before moving to LA as a teenager. In addition to fine art, commercial and fashion photography, he works in television commercial and music video production. Prior to this, Dinco sleuthed as a private investigator for four years. His photographic work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions in Paris, San Francisco and LA, as well as in various group shows. His photos have appeared in such publications as Dazed and Confused, i-D, Dutch, Butt, Loaded, Big, V, Brasil Vogue, and surface, as well as in the anthologies: Sample (Phaidon, 2005), Archeology of Elegance (Schirmer/Mosel, 2002), and Cross (Calloway, 2000). Currently, he is at work on “Homeboy,” a documentary film exploring a group of gay Latino men who were once gang members.

ANDY FAIR has been producing websites since 1995, and is the driving force behind the award winning amateur websites, DirtyBoyVideo.com and StraightBoysFucking.com. Mr. Fair has a diverse background, driving a wide range of entertainment media projects from streaming video for the web to film and video productions. Mr. Fair's adult web projects have enjoyed extensive mainstream media attention including feature articles in the Village Voice, the New York Observer and being named one of Art Forum's Best Of The Year. Video and film projects have been showcased in festivals both nationally and internationally including the New York International Lesbian and Gay Film Festival, the London International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival, San Francisco International Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival as well as festivals in Australia, Toronto, Seattle, and Rochester. >>> "PLUSHIE SCHWARTZ" >>> presents graphic depictions of sex, fur-suits and voyeurism without apology. Housemates, T-Dance and K-Holes challenge Plushie every step of the way. Will he find acceptance? Love? Or just drug induced substitutes? Totally over-the-top, Plushie proves that being yourself is the only way to find true happiness!

MALIK GAINES & ALEX SEGADE from My Barbarian. Malik Gaines is a writer and performer whose theater work has included a 2003 commission for the Mark Taper Forum. Malik also works as an art writer, editor, and teacher and was the recipient of a 2003 Penny McCall Foundation Award for his writing and curatorial work. Malik sings, plays keyboards and other instruments in, serves as musical director of, and dramaturge for, My Barbarian. Alex Segade is a writer, performer, and video-maker with a background in Renaissance literature who has shown work at film festivals across the country and in galleries including American Fine Arts Co. in New York. Alex is a singer, songwriter, dancer in, and artistic director of, My Barbarian.

ANTHONY GOICOLEA (b. 1971, Atlanta, GA) is a Cuban American photographer, painter and video artist based in Brooklyn, NY. He had obtained a BA in Art History and a DFA in Painting from the University of Georgia and received his MFA from Pratt. He was accepted into the “AIM” program at the Bronx Museum of Art and he has been awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship & the 2005 BMW Photo Paris Award. His work is in the collections of The Whitney Museum, The Guggenheim, MOMA, The Brooklyn Museum, and The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Photography, among many others.

BENN MENDOZA completed extensive circus studies at san francisco school of circus arts specializing in aerial fabric (tissu), as well as aeriel hoop. later he got his masters in aerial fabric in montreal after getting kicked out of the san francisco school for beating up a clown. he continued his studies in hand balancing and contortion. benn is currently the director of the vertigo aerial acrobatics posse and the hot boy circus.

DOMINIC JOHNSON is a London-based writer and performer. He writes for several art magazines, teaches performance, and has recently presented his own work in London, Glasgow, Cork, Zagreb and Ljubljana. He is working on a monologue/lecture with bloodletting and assorted actions, entitled “The Human Wreckage Review”. At the moment he is mostly interested in – and rehearsing for – erotic complacency, emotional destitution, and death.

BRIAN KENNY was born in 1982 in Heidelburg, Germany, on an American military base. While growing up he traveled extensively throughout the US with his Army family. As a teenager, he was a competitive gymnast. After high school, he went to Oberlin Conservatory to pursue a degree in voice, but eventually left school to produce his own music, which combines elements of hip hop and ambient. In 2004, Brian moved to New York where he began collaborating with Slava Mogutin under team name SUPERM. Kenny works across drawing, graffiti, video and multimedia installations.

JOSH LEE was born in 1979 in Denver. After spending over five reckless years in New York, he had abandoned his careers as a successful high fashion model and window and set designer for Bergdorf Goodman and Saks and moved back to Denver where he’s been concentrating on his many talents, including textile arts, sewing, feeding hungry boys, and deep-throating. In the recent years, he had collaborated with Slava Mogutin on a series of performances and photo shoots for magazines ranging from Flaunt to Playgirl.

SEBASTIEN MEUNIER is a french fashion designer. He is the creative director for Martin Margiela.

BILLY MILLER is the editor and publisher of “Straight To Hell”, a.k.a. “The Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts” which has published true reader-written sexual histories, and cutting-edge male erotic photography, for over three decades. His artwork has been featured in numerous exhibitions and installations in the US and Europe. In addition, he has also written for a variety of publications. Presently he is working on assembling and editing a mountain of short video clips taken over the past ten years. Mr. Miller hates growing old, but figures it’s better than some of the alternatives.

SLAVA MOGUTIN is a NY-based Russian artist and writer. He started his career as a journalist in Moscow. By the age of 21, he had gained both critical acclaim and official condemnation for his outspoken gay writing. Forced to leave Russia, he was granted political asylum in the US with the support of Amnesty International and PEN American. He is the author of 7 books of poetry, fiction, essays and journalism. He starred in Bruce LaBruce’s art movie Skin Flick (1999) and Laura Collela independent feature Stay Until Tomorrow (2004). Slava took up photography shortly after emigrating. Since 1999, he has been showing his work internationally and contributed to a wide range of art and fashion publications such as Visionaire, i-D, BlackBook, Flaunt and Stern. A hardcover collection of his photography, “Lost Boys”, is scheduled to be published this fall by PowerHouse.

DEAN SAMESHIMA Born and raised in Gardena, CA. / MFA: ArtCenter College of Design / BFA: CalArtslives and works in Silverlake, Ca. / Recent exhibitons include: Young Men at Play II / Boys in My Bedroom, Peres Projects, Los Angeles, CA, Young Men at Play, Taka Ishii Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, Outlaw II (Silverlake), aspreyjacques, London, UK, Outlaw, peres projects, Los Angeles, CA Art Statements, Art/33/Basel, Switzerland (catalogue), Log Cabin, curated by Jeffrey Uslip, Artists Space, New York, Farsites: Urban Crisis and Domestic Symptoms in Recent Contemporary Art, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, Centro Cultural Tijuana, Tijuana and San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA, Will Boys Be Boys? Questioning Adolescent Masculinity in Contemporary Art, curated by Shamim Momim, The Salina Art Center / Upcoming exhibitions: Against Nature, Extra City, Antwerp, Belgium (solo), Swallow Hard: Selections from the Ben & Aileen Krohn Collection, Frye Museum, Seattle, Washington / Sameshima has been published and reviewed in Camera Austria, ArtForum, ArText, NY Times, LA Times, i-D Magazine, BUTT, Visionaire: “Uncensored” issue curated by Mario Testino and included in LA Artland, Cream 3, Vitamin PH (upcoming), Hysteric 7 (monograph) and has published various artist books.

SCOTT TRELEAVEN is a Toronto-born artist, filmmaker and writer, best known for his cult zine/film “THE SALiVATION ARMY”, which the Village Voice called one of the most notable underground films of 2002. His art practice is represented by galleries in LA, Chicago and New York, and incorporates collage, film, installation and photography. 2006 will see the release of “The Salivation Army Black Book” (Printed Matter Inc., NY), a compilation of Treleaven’s writings, zines, and collages over the past 10 years. >>> “THE SALiVATION ARMY” >>> For three years the Salivation Army operated a counterculture zine aimed at restless punk youth. During their brief existence what began as a small, local gang transformed into an increasingly dangerous cult network. Part confessional, part recruitment drive. A vicious, erotic and instructional cut n' paste portrait of the underground. Featuring music by kc accidental and Psychic TV.

NICOLAS WAGNER is a fine art and fashion photographer. born in france, he studied graphic design and advertising in Paris before moving to NY at age 21. He contributes to Interview, flaunt, composite, and Tetu. his current projects include video work and a book about L.A based hip hop dancers.