SETH BOGART
Mondo Blondo Ceramica Sculpturo
FIERMAN presents Mondo Blondo Ceramica Sculpturo, a solo exhibition of new work by artist and musician Seth Bogart, his second show with the gallery. Bogart is known for his wide-ranging creative output, from his twenty-plus year career in music to his ceramic sculpture and painting to his Wacky Wacko line of self-produced shirts and other objects. The throughline in his diverse practice is a gay punk sensibility; he celebrates icons of the queerdo demimonde out of an urgent desire to celebrate the history of the marginalized.
The works in Mondo Blondo Ceramica Sculpturo, all ceramic, are the largest the artist has made to date. The word Mondo, originating in Italian exploitation films in the 1960’s, signifies cinematic camp excess; in this exhibition Bogart’s play with scale revels in the liberatory possibilities that camp provides. A massive disembodied hand with devilishly red nails titled Have You Seen My Hand? sets the tone of carnal reverie. A four foot tall iteration of a bottle of Eau de Cheeks Nightclub Scent Parfum is a monument to the sparkly evanescence of pleasure and promise. Oversized renderings of books both canonical and obscure, from Rosemary’s Baby to The Life and Times of Little Richard to Sontag’s Against Interpretation, reaffirm Bogart’s status as fan, acolyte, and archivist of both queer life and the printed word in book form. Seen together the sculptures reenact the joyful disorientation of a camp classic, the straight world made strange through a twisted lens, a playscape of libidinous possibility.
Seth Bogart (b. 1980, Tucson, AZ) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. He has released music with the acts Gravy Train !!!!, Hunx and his Punx, and as a solo artist. His work has been featured in recent group shows at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara CA; Jeffrey Deitch, New York and LA; among others. His work has been published in Clay Pop (Rizzoli Electa, 2023); The New York Times; Interview; Vogue; The Guardian; The New Yorker, and others. He recently completed an exclusive collaboration with the Academy Museum of merchandise surrounding the John Waters retrospective currently on view.
