Artists…fuck you! Who gave you this designation? Was it your mother? Or did you take upon yourself this mantle during some formative phase of your elementary education? Isn’t that a little bit like calling yourself a professional genius, or a visionary for hire? And the heaps of praise and pity that get piled upon you…like you’re something that must be nurtured, protected, lifted higher to the cultural firmament which is, as auntie promised, your birthright. And how your labor is something that deserves equal protection and recognition…that you deserve benefits like your former classmates who settled ingloriously into middle management, ensconced in all their nationally endowed rights as rapacious, morally and ethically impoverished kulaks. As if your labor has something in common with the farmworker picking cantaloupes or sorghum!
The way I see it, your classmates had the humility to serve more dependable patrons, to be ensconced in their loving corporate providence. You, professional artist, lack that humility: you needed it all—to own your own means of production, mouth to asshole. The idea that on top of this rapacious attitude, you’d shame the rest of us for neglecting you, for undernourishing you and your homespun commodities and studios chock full of added-value. If you think about it, you’re the most hideous capitalist in the mix! Idling in your studio, luxuriating, spoiling food and drink so that you may lay one golden egg after the other. What societal mishap wrought such moral mutation?
Having had the misfortune of being financially entangled with this lot, the perceived common denominator is some form of social ostracism. What else could espouse such a twisted sense of entitlement than the disapproval of one’s community at an important moment of development? The curator of this group show—which will take place on the hallowed grounds of a gallery on Grant Road in Tucson—related his origin story to me, which was simultaneously cloying and ordinary—of being laughed at on the basketball court of his high school—punishment for his mother ratting out his friends upon the discovery of porno and caffeine pills in his bedroom. While this was, apparently, the moment he discovered he was an artist, it’s not difficult to imagine Pol Pot or Ceaușescu in a similar reputational rub before they exacted their respective vengeance: in Pot’s case, killing fields; in Yates’ case, sculptures of Raggedy Andy dolls slumped in some corner of an old house turned into an art gallery.
The other artworks in this show—in which Yates took the liberty of including himself—represent various other forms of woefully misshapen notions of achievement, success, and ethics. The artists on view here are all desperately seeking closure for similar childhood slights: instead of sublimating them into great creation, their reserves of creative ammunition seem to have been compromised at some point, likely during years of neglect, abuse, and bad choices.
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