Little Lord Suri (Cruise/Holmes), 2006
fawn taxidermy form and gold leaf
Courtesy of the artist and Heather Marx Gallery, San Fransico

Greencastle, IN, October 2007 — David Hevel: Babes in the Woods, an exhibition featuring over-the-top, ribald sculptures and installations that employ taxidermy forms, props and craft and borrow their titles from celebrity tabloids, will be on view at the Richard E. Peeler Art Center at DePauw University from October 3 through November 4, 2007.

Imagine if you will: In some parallel universe, a black hole crashes into a teenage girl’s bedroom – sucking up her exploding jewelry box and stacks of In Style and Us magazines, whipping her stuffed animals and makeup collection into its center – then magically it all spews gently down. The baubles and fur have reconstituted, like Jeff Goldblum and that fly. Paris Hilton has been transformed into a blind spider monkey aloft a cloud of fake cotton fluff that drips with gaudy faux-jewels, glittering gold butterflies and Christmas ornaments. Christina Aguilera and Britney Spears – in the guise of scantily clad, scrappy dogs – battle it out backstage at the Grammy’s, atop a sickening, Baroque mound of fake plants, fur and fruit. And, Katie Holmes as a fierce, teeth-baring mandrill that opens its mouth in a silent scream as she gives birth to Baby Suri, atop a tangled pile of blood-red, beaded Valentine hearts. Welcome to David Hevel’s world.

Bay Area artist David Hevel creates densely packed, obsessively crafted, and wickedly humorous sculptures – using taxidermy forms, props and craft supplies – that borrow their titles from celebrity tabloids and slyly comment on the overly accessorized jungle that is Hollywood. The psychedelic frenzy of his installations successfully match the whacked-out way in which the famous fling themselves about in order to transmit their glamour, so we can give them back awe and devotion.

Superficiality aside, Hevel’s work is aptly framed within the context of what French curator and critic Nicolas Bourriaud has termed “postproduction” – a contemporary art practice in which artists reproduce, re-purpose, or re-mix available cultural products in a process referred to as ‘cultural recycling’. Similar to hip-hop artists sampling previously created music or splicing together clips of video, postproduction is a strategy in which visual artists synthesize disparate artifacts from our lives in order to create fresh, open-ended narratives – effectively assembling the toolbox of history in a new context.

Through its appropriation of the strategy of “postproduction” – specifically its conflation of the mid-American aesthetics of taxidermy and fake floral arrangements with the gossip, glamour, and glitz of Hollywood royalty – Hevel’s work reveals the absurdity of American consumerism, the global economy, and the chaos of mass media.

David Hevel received his MFA from the California College of Arts and Crafts in San Francisco in 2002, and his work has been widely exhibited in a number of contemporary art venues in Toronto, New York, Miami, and San Francisco. He currently lives and works in the Bay Area. He is represented by the Heather Marx Gallery, San Francisco.

SPECIAL EVENTS

Opening reception with talk by the artist
October 3, 2007, 4:00 – 5:30 pm

For more information about special events associated with this exhibition, please call the gallery information line at 765.658.4336