We’re in the sixth year of an evangelical machine running the political apparatus us of our country.
The Thomas Kinkade phenomenon is indicative of the wider aspirations of this operation. Our cultural life is under attack. Art is being dumbed-down to pavlumand packaged as a marketable and inoffensive alternative to anything that might inspire or challenge the imagination. And the apparent success of this “product” stands as false testament against the legitimacy of any mode of personal expression that veers toward the experimental or the liberating. The mask of the pleasant aesthetic experience hides the vicious scorn towards nonconformity that the establishment holds for any one of us at any time for any reason.
We’re under attack and we must find ways of fighting back without succumbing to the petty bickering that pretends to be dialogue. Art has a vast vocabulary beyond the tactics of terminology – whack is precisely why it is such a threat to all sides of the establishment and is so consistently the focal target of the imperious.
This show – in general – a political statement against anyone who seeks to smother personal expression while it also is – specifically – my “fuck you” to the mustachioed monster who has become the Michelangelo of the masses in these tense times. These frames were designed to adorn and protect emblems of an empty empire. It has been a great personal pleasure to assist in smuggling them into the hands and imaginations of a dozen great artists. -Mat Gleason