Currently reading : John Waters, Bad Director’s Chair
John Waters, Bad Director’s Chair
8 February 2014
Author : joseph-delaney
Sprüth Magers Berlin
Oranienburger Straße 18
Berlin D-10178
An exhibition by the undisputed champion of bad taste and pioneering independent filmmaker John Waters isnow on at Berlin’s Sprüth Magers gallery.
The director is known for his transgressive film style, from classic comedies Hairspray and Cry-Baby, defined in his 1972 black comedy Pink Flamingos which highlighted the darker side of Hollywood glamour and made an underground star of larger-than-life drag queen Divine, entirely written, produced, composed, shot, edited, and directed by Waters.
The exhibited works bring Waters’ dark wit and often twisted honesty to the gallery setting, presenting works like Playdate, a silicon, synthetic and human hair, “Charles Manson and Michael Jackson, reborn as perfect babies – could they have saved each other if they had met on a playdate before their lives went wrong?” Photographic work further accentuates the director’s sharp eye, outdoing even himself by presenting single stills taken from feature films, often on TVs, that highlight moments overlooked, re-contextualised via storyboard.
Alongside the exhibition, specially made ‘peep rooms’ will show three of the director’s earliest films, including his very first Hag in a Black Leather Jacket, which showed only once to a limited audience when first released when Waters was just 18 and tells a twisted tale of cross-cultural romance during a time of heightened racial tensions, breaking boundaries from the instant his thin moustached face got behind the camera.
The exhibition will run until 5th March 2014
Categories : ArtBerlinCinema / VideoContemporary / Modern art
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John Waters, Bad Director’s Chair
