Mike Bouchet & Paul McCarthy
Spanish Donkey A-Hole Sport Drink Bilboa Sunscreen Model Drawings
Feb 15 - Apr 5, 2014
 
We are very pleased to present the exhibition, "Spanish Donkey A-Hole Sport Drink Bilboa Model Drawings", by Mike Bouchet and Paul McCarthy. 

The drawings, collages and floor reliefs presented in this show are related to the exhibition "Powered A-Hole Spanish Donkey Sport Dick Drink Donkey Dong Dongs Sunscreen Model" at Portikus in Frankfurt, which opens on February, 14th - Valentine's day.

In 2007, the artists collaborated on a set of drawings based around Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim Museum. The artists had both long felt that the general form of the museum obviously looked like a warship.

In these drawings, the Museum is depicted as a battleship, or has battleship details added; large artillery cannons, helicopter and fighter jet staging areas, as well as visitors and museum staff in naval uniforms. 

A selection of floor reliefs that were finished during the installation period of the Portikus exhibition, will also be on display in the exhibition. These works had started as optical abstractions of Captain America's shield. Then paintings were created by dropping rocks, bricks, boards, sawhorses, the shields themselves, followed by two forms of liquid brown pigment (paint and energy drink gelatin), combined mid-air while falling onto these sculptural reliefs. The works originally resembled bulls-eyes and hypnosis images, which became targets for gravity based action paintings, with a clear reference to the works of Billy “Dirty” Al Bengston. 

Other drawings and collages in the show created in 2013 and 2014, relate more specifically to the Portikus exhibition in Frankfurt, as well as further larger themes. The Portikus building's similar appearance to a “Spanish Donkey” medieval torture device, and many of the themes addressed in the show; the humiliating aspects of architectures relation to art, Captain America and his arch rival, an italian fascist named the red skull (as portrayed by a Valentino look-a-like) as a metaphor for some imperialistic aspects of US cultural hegemony since WW2,  the artists themselves as equally fallible characters, and many more complex arenas. The drawings are in fact complex objects themselves, and represent part of the creative process behind the large scale installation which will be on view at the Portikus. Themes regarding art architecture, art, social criticism, art world machinations, US cultural hegemony, self-deprecation, coincidental spelling mistakes, dinner party dictatorships, and more are represented in this body of works.