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A PLUG FOR MY OWN EXHIBITION OPENING THIS THURSDAY
THE OFFICIAL GALLERY PRESS RELEASE & ONLINE MEDIA KIT
Clinton Fein Torture Exhibition Opens Abu Ghraib Wounds
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Security firmly in place, Clinton Fein's latest exhibition, Torture, scheduled to open at Toomey Tourell Gallery in San Francisco on January 4, 2007, is a shocking and defiant exploration of America's approach to torture under the Bush administration.
A series of staged and digitally manipulated photographic images recreate infamous torture scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, transforming diffuse, muted and low-resolution images into large-scale, vivid, powerful and frightening reproductions.
Fein focuses on the choreography and sexualization of torture, which includes images of prisoners, stripped naked, wearing hoods or sandbags as they're forced to stand in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions, simulate sexually degrading acts, and are subject to egregious humiliation. The horrifying images, stylized with fashion-photography lighting, radiate a profound beauty and eroticism that is all at once seductive, disturbing and unsettling.
Fein's deliberate rejection of blurring or obscuring the blatant nudity prevalent in the original Abu Ghraib images is consistent with his history of challenging notions of decency, which included a Supreme Court victory over United States Attorney General, Janet Reno.
"In undertaking the Torture series," said museum specialist and art consultant, Hanna Regev, "Fein channels his artistic reservoir of explosive energy into a high resolution digital camera to expose the dark side of the first 21st century war and its demoralizing and abhorrent effects."
Born in Johannesburg in 1964, Fein's work has achieved international recognition and his previous exhibitions in both San Francisco and New York have been fraught with controversy. Palo Alto printer, Zazzle, deliberately destroyed two Abu Ghraib-related prints prior to an exhibition, also at Toomey Tourell, in 2004.
"In a culture obsessed with violence, as indicative in Mel Gibson's recent movies such as the Passion of Christ and Apocalypto, Fein's Torture series, refashioned in an artistic rendition, warrants a second look," added Regev.
The Torture exhibition runs from January 4, 2007 through January 30, 2007 at Toomey Tourell gallery. Additional information can be found at www.clintonfein.com/torture/ . |
TORTURE 2007
About Torture Fein's Torture focuses on the choreography and sexualization of torture, which includes images of prisoners, stripped naked, wearing hoods or sandbags as they're forced to stand in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions, simulate sexually degrading acts, are plastered with feces and subject to egregious humiliation. In spite of the horror, the images, stylized with fashion-photography lighting, radiate a profound beauty and eroticism that is all at once seductive, disturbing and unsettling.
Fein's deliberate rejection of blurring, obscuring or even shading the blatant nudity in his images is a response to the blurring of genitals that characterized the images released to the public, and is consistent with Fein's history of challenging the notions of decency, which included a Supreme Court victory over United Sates Attorney General, Janet Reno. "Nudity and genitalia are not obscene, torture is," said Fein. "Obfuscation is at the heart of what is happening with the torture debate. If anything, they should have blurred Private Lynndie England's thumb."
Born in Johannesburg in 1964, Fein's work has achieved international recognition and his previous exhibitions in both San Francisco and New York have been fraught with controversy. The Torture exhibition runs from January 4, 2007 through February 3, 2007 at Toomey Tourell gallery. Additional information can be found at www.clintonfein.com/torture/.
>>Clinton Fein's TORTURE |
Artist Statement
In April 2004, a story broke that would change the perception of America by both Americans and the rest of the world. The Abu Ghraib images jolted us, momentarily, into a realization that morality is a relative construct, and that in a world defined by such simplistic contrivances as good and evil, it is what humans are capable of doing to one another that affirms, despite our intellect, that at our core we are animals, primal and base.
In response to an interview question for her new book, American Protest Literature, author and Harvard lecturer, Zoe Trodd asked me whether I thought the Abu Ghraib images had a lesser effect on public opinion than Vietnam war images because (a) they emphasized humiliation rather than physical violence, and (b) their aesthetic quality was not high - so grainy and undetailed, just snapshots, no texture or focus.
The sexual dimension that seemed to be glaringly obvious in the Abu Ghraib imagery but clearly under the general "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy applied to all things sexual in the military, is noticeably absent from much of the debate.
The images that were released by 60 Minutes II in April 2004, and subsequently reproduced by publications the globe over, included a pyramid of bare-assed detainees. Every image I have ever sourced, then and since, showed the assholes and genitals blurred. It struck me that obscenity laws, including those governing the transmission of images over the Internet - the very provision I challenged, but which remains in effect relating to obscenity - precluded the image from being transmitted unless those areas were blurred out. Yet, to me, the obscenity constituted the grinning servicemembers, PFC Lynndie England and Specialist Charles Graner, giving the thumbs up.
The revulsion and outrage voiced by politicians and Pentagon officials alike failed to mention that the abuse at Abu Ghraib went well beyond torturing the detainees to humiliate them, but revealed a sexual dysfunction far deeper, related to the captors.
The execution of the photographs for this exhibition presented unique challenges and raised unexpected questions. From communicating my intentions to the models so that they understood what I was doing and why, to physically handcuffing, tying and placing sandbags over their heads, I came as close as I ever wanted to the mindset of those who executed the actual deeds at Abu Ghraib. >>Read full, extended Artist Statement |
The Images
Just before the opening of my exhibition in 2004, Silicon Valley printing company Zazzle characterized the iconic hooded Iraqi with outstretched arms dangling electrical wires, positioned as stars on an American flag as "excessively violent," in my piece, "Like Apple Fucking Pie" before destroying it. Yet the same company did not regard a man, hands and feet bleeding and nailed to a wooden cross, as excessively violent. Somehow, the image of a crucifixion is not considered violent imagery, because we, as a society, have accepted the attachment of some spiritual significance negates the violence.
I experienced a startling realization quite unexpectedly after one of the models had been standing in an excruciatingly uncomfortable position for longer than expected as I shot him from different angles, his arms wrapped around his knees, doubled over, and a sandbag over his head. After the shot was done, before even removing the sandbag, he stood exhausted with his hands resting on his thighs, before even taking the sandbag off his head. I carried on shooting, because in that moment, it became clear to me that most of the images we had witnessed from Abu Ghraib were also staged. What the Abu Ghraib images represented were indeed trophy shots, much like the proud, smiling faces of those responsible for lynching standing boastfully alongside their handiwork.
The exhibition includes two pieces that are not modeled on Abu Ghraib imagery, but rather on what I imagined we were not seeing -- photos that were not being taken, hence the names Crucifiction 1 and 2 (spelled with a c and not an x). Click here to see all the images for this show, including, alongside them, the originals that inspired them.
>>The images |
Torture Video Promotion Simply click on the image below, and a new window will open. Then push play, and voila It's also viewable on YouTube and Google Video if the VodPod version doesn't work for you.
Gallery Talk
Behind the Exhibition Clinton Fein's Torture examines the choreography and sexualization of torture as it applied to Abu Ghraib, and the systemic rot that exacerbated it.
Stephen Tourell and Nancy Toomey of Toomey Tourell invite you to join artist Clinton Fein and author and Harvard lecturer, Zoe Trodd, in a presentation relating to the content of the exhibition. Discussion will include the motivation behind the restaging of the Abu Ghraib images, and the challenges that presented themselves. Video Interviews with Models A short video includes interviews with some of the models appearing in the photographs, as they share some of the insights and observations that occured as the shoot progressed.
Gallery Talk Time and Location WHEN:
Saturday, January 13, 2007
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:
Toomey Tourell
49 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
About the Artist
Clinton Fein Biography Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Clinton Fein is a San Francisco-based artist, writer and activist, noted for his controversial website Annoy.com and its Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, United States Attorney General, regarding the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997. Fein is represented by Toomey Tourell in San Francisco and Axis Gallery in New York.
In October 2004, Palo Alto-based printing company, Zazzle, destroyed two of Fein's giant images just before the opening of a solo exhibition at Toomey Tourell Gallery. The one image, reviewed at Chelsea's Axis Gallery by New York Times' Ken Johnson, was described as "an American flag with the stars and stripes made from the text of the official Abu Ghraib report is accompanied by fifty representations of the iconic image of a hooded man teetering on a box with wires trailing from his arms comprising the stars." The second image depicting President Bush on a crucifix entitled "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was also withheld by the printing company, who told San Francisco Chronicle art critic, Kenneth Baker that the company had "destroyed the images." Company spokesperson, Matt Wilsey, claimed the image might "offend Christians," and threatened to sue Fein for defamation if Fein publicly criticized the company's actions.
In May 2006 the same image was exhibited at the Katzen Arts Center at American University Museum in Washington D.C. in "Visual Politics: The Art of Engagement," curated by Jack Rasmussen. "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was also published in Art of Engagement, Visual Politics in California and Beyond, by Peter Selz, released in November 2005. Peter Selz is Professor Emeritus of the History of Art at the University of California, Berkeley, is the founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum, and a former curator of New York's Museum of Modern Art. In November 2006, "Who Would Jesus Torture?" was published in Harvard lecturer Zoe Trodd's book, American Protest Literature.
Fein is currently President of the Board of First Amendment Project (FAP), a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting and promoting freedom of information, expression, and petition. FAP provides advice, educational materials, and legal representation to its core constituency of activists, journalists, and artists in service of fundamental liberties. In recognition of his work, Fein was nominated for a PEN/Newman's Own First Amendment Award in 2001.
Fein currently serves as an editor for First Amendment Project's blog, as well as his own blog, Pointing Fingers on San Francisco Chronicle's website, SFGate.
Early Review by Hanna Regev
The vision of Americans that emerges from Fein's carefully crafted, nine-panel Abu Ghraib installation pierces into the heart of the scandal. Fein wants us to grasp the magnitude of a spectacle that stripped prisoners of their human dignity. The mocking of religion and treating prisoners of war as subhumans has become the face of America that won't be forgotten by the estimated 1.6 million Muslims around the world.
In Torture, Fein has synthesized this unwieldy cache of evidence, producing an indispensable and riveting account of the Abu Ghraib nightmare. The compelling imagery fitted to human scale is in our face and is deliberate in provoking a visceral reaction, a moral stand, and perhaps a national discourse that might and can change the course. Can we let go of the belief that art can change the moral focus of our world?
Fein channels his artistic reservoir of explosive energy into a digital camera to expose the dark side of the first 21st century war and its demoralizing and abhorrent effects. In a culture obsessed with violence, as indicative in Mel Gibson's recent movies such as The Passion of Christ and Apocalypto, Fein's Torture series, refashioned in an artistic rendition, warrants a serious look.
>>Clinton Fein:Torture: Review by Hanna Regev |
Select Media Coverage/Reviews One of two digital prints...uses an inflammatory favorite, the American flag, but don't be fooled by the stripes (texts from the shockingly graphic Abu Ghraib report) or stars (50 profiles of the iconic hooded prisoner on a box dangling electric wires -- yikes!). This work has a stunning, subtly nuanced sense of color and composition. Fein's website, www.annoy.com, is relentlessly anti-Bush and a lot of other things, too. This get-tough attitude, in the "Art of Engagement" tradition, is very West Coast but also has the punch of South Africa, land of Apartheid and diamond mines, where the artist was born and raised. (Artnet)...the irrepressible Clinton Fein (The New York Times...This South African provocateur's vitriolic, darkly comic digital montages attack President Bush, his cabinet and his Iraq policies (The New York Times) ... The printing service, called Zazzle, informed artist Clinton Fein on Monday that it would not release two of six images for "Numb & Number," an exhibit of Fein's deliberately provocative political art (San Jose Mercury News) ... Bad-boy political artist Clinton Fein expects trouble and regularly gets it (The San Francisco Chronicle) The company made its decision after determining the prints violated the site's user agreement on the grounds of being both offensive to religious believers--in this case Christians--and excessively violent (C|NET) .. excessive violence as well as derogatory references to religion (Los Angeles Times) ... Clinton Fein's scalding "Numb & Number" show at the Toomey Tourell Gallery features grim photographs of the war dead and wounded in Iraq ... a depiction of Bush as a crucified Christ with a warhead sprouting from his loincloth and a lettered screed on one work about a "crude, pathetic, ugly thief who is propped up by his Daddy's oil interests." The leader of the free world, as Fein reviles him with unchecked, ad hominem poison, is in "a Jimmy Beam-induced, unfortunately non-fatal, pretzel-choking, 'with us or against us' paradigm. (The San Francisco Chronicle) ... Among the rattling images in Fein's "Numb & Number" show is one of Cheney and Dianne Feinstein's faces melded together and another of bin Laden as the Statue of Liberty holding Bush's severed head aloft. (The San Francisco Chronicle) ... A current show by another artist-activist, Clinton Fein, called "Numb and Number" at the Toomey-Tourell gallery in San Francisco features digital montages that take off viciously against the current administration. (San Jose Mercury News) ... No Mister Nice Guy art at Toomey Tourell, just pure blunt force trauma. Clinton Fein's imagery may go as far beyond the line as any in expressing sentiments about the current world situation, and about the United States, the War in Iraq, and the Bush administration in particular. If you want to see complete and total venom conveyed through art, see "Numb and Number" and visit Fein's seditious brainchild, annoy.com. This is the type of stuff that buckets you a first class trip to oblivion in many parts of the world, but not here in America, The Land of the Free (ArtBusiness.com) ... Clinton Fein expresses outright scorn at the Bush Administration ... His show, entitled "Numb & Number," is the most potent political art of the year (The Berkeley Camera Club) ... California artist Clinton Fein is used to getting flak for his blatantly political and often shocking artworks ... ultra-provocative content (ArtsJournal.com) ... Home to geek wizards who invented high-resolution imaging technologies that have revolutionized the art scene - home to a digital printing company that has, alas, in this season of partisan fervor, censored two politically-charged art works: that's Silicon Valley! ... why is it censorship if a private business decides not to do business with an artist? Are we not allowed to run our business the way we want to, to work with whom we want to? Or, was this a ploy by Fein to get some publicity for his show ... which was launching that same week? (Silicon Valley Watcher) His art is not subtle. It can be hard to take. But Clinton Fein is not afraid to make a statement ... Many viewers must wonder whether such low-blow assaults have caused Fein to disown any of his past work... One of the least scabrous but hardest to take pieces in his show lays the words "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" over a grid of photographs from various sources documenting Iraqi war casualties... A lot of Clinton Fein's political art looks facile, even puerile, to those who see only its inflammatory side, not that he really cares. (The San Francisco Chronicle) ... What's Fein's sin? Politically confrontational art that aggressively makes use of emotionally charged imagery (Surface magazine)
Capital Roundup
artnet Magazine
May 22, 2006
'Imprints: Works on Paper'
By Holland Cotter, The New York Times
March 25, 2005
Everything's Fein
By Molly Freedenberg, Ventura County Reporter
February 12, 2005
Corporate Policy Leads to Political Censorship
By Molouk Y. Ba-Isa, Arab News
January 11, 2005
His art is not subtle. It can be hard to take. But Clinton Fein is not afraid to make a statement.
By Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle
November 2, 2004
Clinton Fein and the Art of Political Protest
By Deborah Phillips, Toomey Tourell
As Nov. 2 nears, artists get in their last licks, sending up Bush and company on center stage
By Steve Winn, The San Francisco Chronicle
October 20, 2004
2 of Clinton Fein's political works run afoul of his printer's policies
By Kenneth Baker, The San Francisco Chronicle
October 12, 2004
The Clinton Cabinet
Surface Magazine
October 2004
CLINTON FEIN, "Warning"
By Ken Johnson, The New York Times
First Thursday Art Openings; San Francisco
By Alan Bamberger, ArtBusiness.com
October 7, 2004
Print shop refuses to release political images
By Jack Fischer, The San Jose Mercury News
October 6, 2004
Annoy.com Webmaster says war art censored
Paul Festa, C|NET
October 6, 2004
Exhibition Information
Location and Times
WHEN:
January 4, 2007 - Janaury 30, 2007
Opening Recption
THURSDAY JANUARY 4, 2007
5.30 PM - 7.30 PM
WHERE:
TOOMEY TOURELL GALLERY
49 Geary Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
Phone: 415-989-6444
Fax: 415-989-6644 |
Contact Information
TOOMEY TOURELL GALLERY
415-989-6444
49 Geary Street San Francisco, CA 94108
Stephen Tourell
Nancy Toomey
Todd Bennett
GALLERY HOURS:
Tuesday through Friday:
11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Saturday:
11:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. |
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I hope to be at the gallery talk, but will probably not be able to attend. I teach photography at the College of the Redwoods, three hours north of San Francisco.
I have read your artist statement, and viewed your provocative work. We, my friends and I, were discussing the Abu Ghraib images on our way to San Fran. We were simply going gallery hoping, I did not know of you or your work.
Questions:
Have you read, 'Regarding the Torture of Others', by Susan Sontag?
Have you read, 'Art On My Mind', by bell hooks?
With this body of work you hope to socially uplift society. You want America to wake the fuck up. I could not agree more with the sentiments you've expressed.
I do not believe you have achieved your ultimate goal. This work objectifies and re-victimizes.
Your message is strong. Your method lacks the ability to carry out the objectives you put forth in your artist statement.
My acid test...
If one of the true victims from Abu Ghraib depicted in these images found himself standing before this body of work. Would he thank you for carrying the torch and fighting the good fight? Or would he feel victimized again?
I applaud your work and your message. And I put before your the challenge that artists repeatedly have to overcome...
Retain your message, yet find another way to say it. Provide the much needed social uplift without weighing down the society you desire to help.
If you were opposed to rape, would you photograph a mock rape? And would that image truly help the rape victim or create awareness in the rapist, or society as a whole?
I am currently creating work dealing with issues surrounding the Bush Regime. After spending a few evenings yelling at my television I decided to simply put it into my work.
These are questions I have been challenging myself with.
This is just one artist's opinion. I thank you for opportunity to comment, and I hope I have the privilege of speaking with you in person.
D. Anthony Mahone
Posted by: D. Anthony Mahone | January 05, 2007 at 02:45 AM
You fucking idiot......we had more severe initiations at college.......give me a break...
Posted by: Steve | July 12, 2007 at 04:07 AM