ZACHARY DELACRUZ
I wonder what social media would do to, say, Bette Davis's career if she was just starting out today. It’s possible that if she was not on Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew, she would be probably be doing lines off of a toilet seat with Lindsay Lohan. It is possible that she would be dancing on a table, drenched with champagne, making out with Paris Hilton, while paparazzi rush over to take shots of their drunkenly exposed “cooters”. But it is probable that she would not be Bette Davis, she would be something else. Let us not be coy. This lifestyle, in some degree, existed in the fifties. However, today is an utter exacerbation of the phenomenon that places social media in the driver’s seat of what and who is a celebrity. The term "celebrity" has been completely altered since its use by Ancient Greeks referring to famed Olympic winners. Today a typical example of a celebrity is a woman who has octuplets (8 children in one birth) and is only famous for stretching out her plumbing. Currently, my work sets out to explore this ever-negatively changing social phenomena as it becomes sadly humorous as well as undeniably dominant in pop culture. Using portraiture, I am able to explore the attraction and repulsion of the celebrity. I love to hate them and hate to love them; the portraits possess this feeling by depicting a simultaneous essence of glorification and iconoclasm. Each portrait will start out as a collaged image of a certain celebrity, in prime condition with raw representation straight from either my camera or the Internet. Then a very aggressive and destructive De Kooning-esque mark making occurs, deconstructing and fragmenting the figure with paint while periodically piercing through the surface, ripping away a protective layer, exposing what lies beneath. This is the defacement of them, the contempt I have, for what I feel is a worthless and underserving celebrity (Kate Gosselin, Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton). Or they will be a direct reference to Richard Prince with white-out-eyes, nose and mouth; but taken further, gesturally outlining the body and giving them a monstrous new composition. Not ignorant to the hypocrisy involved in this love/hate relationship, I sometimes must alter them and adorn them with glamorous metallic gold/silver and glitter because at the end of the day, I am guilty of being entertained by them. Many cannot deny their need for the latest issue of, say, OK! Magazine to take to the john as reading material, or that they inquisitively find themselves skimming the covers of magazines on line at Duane Reade, shocked to find Justin Bieber has an alleged love child. The cult of the star fascinates me, and how vulgar and deliciously naughty our attraction is to them. Who cares about a fundraising gala for the blind, Lindsay Lohan’s drunken crotch shot while exiting her limo is far more entertaining. And that’s just it, it’s all about the entertainment. So keep entertaining us and we’ll keep caring.
