Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is… A LOVE STORY documents the latest iteration of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s investigation into the malleability of self and reality and Daniel Albrigo’s response to the elder artist’s project. As part of that ongoing endeavor, P-Orridge’s has had all of h/er teeth removed and replaced with gold casts of the originals. The gesture is emblematic of Breyer P-Orridge’s efforts because it demonstrates the severity of h/er commitment to erasing the boundaries between art and life. Infatuated with Breyer P-Orridge’s gold teeth, Daniel Albrigo created a body of paintings documenting aspects of the process, and instigating the exhibition. Albrigo contributes stunningly realistic portraits of Breyer P-Orridge’s cast teeth. Closely cropped and lushly painted, the paintings engage the viewer in contemplating the gaudily ornamented orifice and dental prosthetics much as they would a conventional still life. In Positive 4, for instance, a rich, warm light shines down upon a cast of Breyer P-Orridge’s mouth perched on a metallic ledge. The paintings act as both ode and exposé.

Underpinning this exhibition is the collaborative effort begun in 1993 by Genesis P-Orridge and performance artist Lady Jaye Breyer that focused on a single, central concern: deconstructing the fiction of self. Frustrated by what they felt to be culturally enforced limits on identity but emboldened by the radical power of love, P-Orridge and Lady Jaye applied collage and cut-up techniques to their own bodies in an effort to merge their respective selves. Through plastic surgery, hormone therapy, cross-dressing and altered behavior, they fashioned a single, pandrogynous being, Breyer P-Orridge. The work is an experiment in identity, a test of how fully two people can integrate their lives, and, ultimately, a symbolic gesture of evolution and the alchemical union of the male and female halves of the human. Although Lady Jaye passed away in 2007, Genesis has continued Breyer P-Orridge, putting into question not only the limits between self and other but also life and death.

Breyer P-Orridge will present new assemblages, as well as photo-works, jewelry, and a neon psychick cross, the latter in collaboration with Albrigo. The sculptural assemblages combine sensuality, horror, and religion in curiosity cabinets that recall Joseph Cornell’s boxes, albeit far more grotesque that that allusion implies. Like the mixture of flesh and gold in Breyer P-Orridge’s mouth, these talismanic objects combine disparate materials: photographic references to the body, tampons, feathers, bone, fish, lapis lazuli, raw rubies, glitter and sequins. The exhibition also includes a recent artwork created by Breyer P-Orridge with Alice Genese, a respected jeweler: a substantial silver ring with a cast of the artist’s lower left molars in the place of a traditional stone. The ring is in an edition of 23, a number the mystical value of which was taught to Breyer P-Orridge by Brion Gysin and William S. Burroughs.

In Gallery 2, The Power of Selection, part 2, curated by Ryan Travis Christian, features work by Ben Jones, Denise Kupferschmidt, Keegan McHargue, Dana Dart-McLean and more.

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Tags: West Loop, Western Exhibitions