150 11th Avenue (between 21st and 22nd Streets)

5/4/2012 – 6/3/2012

Kost’s celebrity paintings–silkscreened on large-scale canvases from Polaroid images–are paired here with Polaroid facsimiles by Andy Warhol from the 70s and 80s. Both artists share an inquisitive lust to understand fame in all its dramatic guises and extravagant poses. Occasionally they share a subject–Liza Minnelli, Dolly Parton, Keith Richards–though Kost approaches these iconic individuals from a very different perspective. In some cases they are obscured or abstracted; occasionally disembodied, as with Madonna’s head, which appears to float on a sea of silver, or Grace Jones, who dissolves into a beautiful haze of flowers and tapestries. By translating his original photographs into these slick yet gritty canvases, Kost has given his unique vision a new sense of monumentality. In these works, which came from his Polaroid photographs, celebrity is both celebrated and complicated. We see the mobs of paparazzi themselves, clamoring for a shot, and the polarized finish of the paintings themselves is simultaneously glamorous and anti-glamor–just as Beyonce here appears both as a superstar and a sort of monster, caught in the camera’s flash. Like his forbearer Warhol, Kost is a participant in the world he depicts and also somewhat of a voyeur, diligently capturing all the madness and the romance of celebrity, all the while translating a sense of intimacy and access.

Kost’s Polaroid collages are again paired here with single Polaroid images by Warhol from the 70s and 80s. Kost takes a nod from the godfather of contemporary art while exploding notions of perspective with his elaborate installations, sprawling and almost sculptural arrangements. Warhol’s cheeky images of statuettes at the Last Supper are complemented by Kost’s equally irreverent tableau of holy drag queens in impending matrimony; a Warhol portrait of John Waters’s star Divine joins Kost’s collage of  BoomBoom, bare-chested and posed before a wall of Lady Gaga posters, mirroring her gesture. For Kost, the background landscape—from city skylines to lurid street murals—is just as vital as the collages’ equally colorful subjects, a dual investigation into the idea of facade (both of character and of place) . These works confound our expectations, trick the eye, and titillate.

]]> http://jeremykost.com/2012/05/17/abstracted-realities/feed/ 0 http://jeremykost.com/2012/05/17/anyone-paintings/ http://jeremykost.com/2012/05/17/anyone-paintings/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 03:27:51 +0000 jeremy http://jeremykost.com/?p=5099 ANYONE OTHER THAN ME

This group of new paintings grew out of a live performance Kost staged with two well-known drag queens, Sharon Needles and Vercua la’Pirhana, at the Capitol Skyline Hotel in Washington D.C. in January, 2010. A real-time video feed from three surveillance cameras in the queens’ hotel room recorded their elaborate personal transformations from boys to rockstars—putting on make-up, outrageous guises, and emotionally evolving—before they joined the party downstairs to applause.  Here, Kost has translated frozen moments of this performance into paintings, some of them purposefully enigmatic (a hand holding an eyelash curler which also carries an ominous connotation) and others gently subversive (Needles examining herself in the mirror, wearing a life-size body condom, while a football game plays on a nearby television.) If the artist’s initial performance video was born from a documentary impulse, these works memorialize the drag queens’ transition to monumental greatness, through a grainy, mysterious lens.

]]> http://jeremykost.com/2012/05/17/anyone-paintings/feed/ 0 http://jeremykost.com/2012/05/17/the-male-form/ http://jeremykost.com/2012/05/17/the-male-form/#comments Thu, 17 May 2012 03:20:05 +0000 jeremy http://jeremykost.com/?p=5082 THE MALE FORM

Warhol explored a fascination with the male anatomy through Polaroids that cropped and focused on specific elements of the body: the rippling muscles of a young model’s back; the broad shoulders and thin waist of a man shot from behind; a young Sly Stallone, bare-chested and gazing seductively at the camera. Kost’s own series focuses on what the artists playfully terms “boys”—young models on the cusp of manhood, innocent yet coy (see the piñata saved from destruction ) A previous show of Jeremy’s work with young men, Were Were All Innocent Once, directly looks at the question posed… when are we innocent, at what point do we lose it, and were we ever.  These collaged portraits are eclectic and idyllic, capturing nude lakeside revels, dejected-looking skate punks, and self-assured studs, while in a series of double-exposure photographs, we’re treated to dream-like, disorienting portraits, further evidence of how Kost continues to push the boundaries of the Polaroid medium to it’s limits.

So sorry, but we’ve been posting more regularly from there then here.

We just posted THIS today!

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One of the larger collages featured in Of an Instance, on view until June 3rd at 150 11th Avenue in NYC!

This work, shot in Los Angeles, features Veruca la’Pirahna, Detox Icunt, and RPDR4 starlet Willam Belli!

All currently on view amongst other new works in “Of An Instance” in NYC…  Now through June 2nd at 150 11th Avenue.

With Chris Petersen, Brian, Max LaManna, Greg Remmey, and Adam Miller…

HUGO BOSS Presents
Jeremy Kost, Of an Instance
in Partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum
May 5 – 31, 2012
150 11th Avenue, New York, NY

HUGO BOSS in partnership with The Andy Warhol Museum,
one of the four Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, is pleased to announce Jeremy Kost,
Of an Instance, an exhibition of works by Jeremy Kost. The series will be on view from
May 5 through 31, 2012 at 150 11 Avenue in New York, NY. The exhibition hours are
Tuesday through Saturday from 12pm to 6pm and will also be open to the public on
Sunday, May 6 and Monday, May 7. Of an Instance will debut on May 3 in series of
special window installations on display at the following
HUGO BOSS store locations throughout New York City: Meatpacking store at 401 West
14 Street, Soho store at 555 Broadway, and the Columbus Circle store at 10 Columbus
Circle

Jeremy Kost, Of an Instance will present an overview of Kost’s work to date, focusing
on three main points of interest in his practice, fame, drag queens and the male figure
—all joined through a common theme of façade. The exhibition will consist of a
selection of works by Kost that include his signature Polaroid collages, videos and a
new series of silkscreen paintings, exhibited in dialogue with a selection of works from
The Andy Warhol Museum’s collection that will be selected by the artist and include
Warhol’s large format Polaroids: self-portraits as well as celebrity portraits. Kost and
Warhol both traverse the subcultural terrain of nightlife and parties, sharing an
insatiable interest in celebrities, drag queens and beautiful men. Jeremy Kost, Of an
Instance will reveal the artist’s ability to uncover intimate aspects of both celebrated
and unknown characters, and explore the idea of façade and identity as seen in his
subject’s personae.

In his work, Kost gives physicality to the images he captures, making real the sights
and motions of the worlds he occupies. Kost like Warhol inserts himself into the reality
of his subjects from gritty nightlife realism to staged fairytale scenarios documenting
these worlds and their characters as if he was one himself.
“Kost melds with his surroundings by building trust with his subjects—telling them
with a smile or a nod that they are indeed the most beautiful of all. The repertoire he
builds with his chosen models presents itself in each intimate portrait that he captures
with a push of a button,” states Eric Shiner, Director of The Andy Warhol Museum. Kost
continues Warhol’s legacy of documenting gender, fame, sexuality and fantasy in an
instantaneous manner, turning everyone into a superstar.