I posted a picture on my instagram of a figure atop boxes in a warehouse with an extended erection, in a rockstar contrapasto. I titled it Sex god, then toned it down to sex vision, then changed it to sex dream.
Friend of mine asked me to explain, that it needed more words. Another friend sent me a direct message, relaying a story of a conversation that we’d had about wriggling and writhing dicks. It was when about we were going through the doggy days of adolescence, and our infatuations were sex-centric. I’d seen pornographic films young, and my earliest inmpressions were the dicks. How they seemed to have a life of their own, glossy and weighty, and I imagined they had some prehensile capabilities, and that that was what would account for adulthood. These independent limbs, serpent-like and heat seeking. To the friend who relayed the story of our conversation, I sent a recollection of my own from that time, which was a hovel for the Weimaraner and the schnauzer. The schnauzer was neutered, I don’t think the Weimaraner was fixed. I remembered this section of the garage, and the color of that hovel under the stairs where the Weimaraner would go. It was a hot honey hovel, and smelled thick like dog, and I’d made peace with the dogs and could go down in there and sit while my friends talked and argued with their parents.
The vision of the figure that led to the drawing was photographic in nature, like a film noir still in a vast warehouse. Kind of German looking still image, with a kind of prosthetic prehiensile, multi-kinked cock, like a jungle vine or an uncoiled snake.
I’ve been wanting to make a hoe account. I joked about it with my lover; it would be called kemmy’s_hoe_account and it would be public, with pictures of me and my body etc. I want a little headroom, but don’t want to alienate anyone who might just opt in for the drawings, or whatever. Headroom. Some girls I know do it and it seems like a good set up.
Also, from some of the women artists I know, I’m very inspired by the body. Some women have their nudity out there. This isn’t exclusive to women. I think of those nude photos of Arnold Schwarzenegger. It’s like a holding- a here I am. I don’t think about people nude, I think art school has casualized nudity for me in a very healthy way. When I see a friend nude I feel cared for. I was a counselor at this Jewish camp and all the Jews (but not the Gentiles) could go to the lake at some point in the summer and swim nude together as a sort of, well, I don’t know what, communion? It reminded me that I’m not in some club. I feel unheld from the club I was supposed to be a part of; the Christian one, where youth group consisted of knock-off Nickelodeon channel games, chubby bunny, toothpaste trivia, hipocracy, and censorship. With graduation comes a certificate that reads ‘congrats on wasting your youth on superstition’, and an ironic ‘good luck’.
I care very much about this image, the posted one. I keep checking in on it. I’ve got some guilt yet maybe, checking in; ‘is this okay?’ all the time.
In 2013 I was twenty three yearly old and in Berlin. I’d met some friends in a hostel and, one month in to a European trip, became involved along with my friends with the idea of applying for a visa, and posting up in Berlin for a while. I began looking for a studio pretty immediately. One studio I found in Neukölln was to be shared with three gay artists making gay art, and one artist in particular painted comic like sequential paintings, and I recall one where his dick grew to monumental size, and he went into god mode. I kind of didn’t know what to think of him after seeing his work, but I sometimes think of him, and the work seemed to parallel the powers of himself.
Obsessed with polemic, what could it mean that someone has a good experience? Obsessed with competition too, likewise.
I was in no way ready to move to Berlin. I met a group of Aussies and hanged with them and went to clubs, and kind of got disoriented, and in the times I wasn’t with them I was in this miserable perfect apartment in Prenzlauerberg (the equivalent to Park Slope) either making paintings that would disappear because they were unfinished, cursed, or some combination of the two, or being terribly sick and thinking I might have HIV developing, not joke.
Another story along with the Berliners. More recently, I met this rap artist. Always interested, I asked him for his contact, or how I could look him up, and he pulled out his phone, googled himself, and we proceeded to listen to five consecutive songs of his, all to my chagrin about typical rapper bullshit, and periodically he would narrate to the side irl, “see, I’m not like those other rappers just rapping about guns and money and bitches.” (Which is something I’ve heard from many rappers in similar arrangements) But I tell you here he was!! One song went ‘I’m a king, bow down to me’, on repeat, and it was such a curious experience while his girlfriend stood next to us, and the video was all guns pointing at the screen and money, and literal asses shaking to the camera. In good show etiquette, I reserved any sign of judgement, and said thank you, and also, secretly, quietly, inside, wondered of all the illusions, qualifiers, screens each and every ones of us maintain all the time, to make anything, judgements, or products, or work hours, whatever; it’s all suppositions. There were no judgements to be passed to be honest, and somehow, that rapper remains a king in a self-declaratory way at least.
There’s no way to wrap this up. Hope you like the painting and thanks.
