The infamous UCLA performance/body artist, Joe Deutch who brought a shotgun into Chris Burden's classroom, performed at Telic Arts Exchange this Halloween. Joe is also a participant in a group show at Marianne Boesky gallery in New York. Jerry Saltz recently reviewed the Boesky show, describing it cumulatively as prescient and expressive of both being in loads of trouble on the macro level and strangely calm on the inside. He singled out two artists, Joe Deutch and Jeffrey Wells as the artists responsible for making the show.
Deutch's performance at Telic Arts was agitated, dangerous, and I have to agree with Saltz that Deutch seems almost "obscenely" turned on by danger and violence.
When I walked into the room, the space was packed and Deutch was lying on his back beneath a door, cutting his stomach or his hand with a knife. This was concealed from the majority of the audience but we were crouched down on the edge of the stage. After getting some blood flowing he reached around and sharply knocked on the door a few times. He stood up with the door, footed it, held the door knob and swung the door about, over the heads of some of the audience. He was mumbling or reciting a rhyme when he pulled out the knife and stabbed through the back of the door as violently as possible. He stabbed himself in the process but didn't let it affect the performance.
Then he sat down and began filling glasses with water and dropping them so shattered glass surrounded him and finally he selected a syringe, a spoon, some powder, some spit and a leather belt from his waist and injected something into his arm. This was the end of the performance. The only evidence of the piece was a sheet of paper that he had repeatedly wiped his blood on.
Body art and performance art have always been about the most radical media and have always involved mutilation, body fluids, s&m, and violence. The attraction is both the self sacrifice for arts sake and the visceral effect of viewing such a personal and destructive acting out of the human experience. In viewing Deutch's performance, I can't say I liked it. It worried me in a parental way, but as with many good exhibitions, I'm still thinking of it and for me, that's the experience I need to have to know that something is effective.
It was the way he ended the performance, without fanfare, without drama, walking away, almost disappearing that struck me as being representative of Saltz's assessment of the group of artists at Boesky this month. Deutch's performances are a bit terrifying and truly life threatening. He's seems to play on the edge of oblivion and anything could happen during one of his performances. But when it's over, he walks away in an undisturbed manner, as his catharsis is not his own, but one reflecting the catharsis of society itself.
