GLR September-October 2023

ART

Prepare to Be Dazzled

T HE FIRST SOLO exhibition of Machine Dazzle, the nomd ’ artiste of Matthew Flower, which re cently concluded at the Museum of Arts and Design in Manhattan, spread over two full gallery floors like synthetic blossoms. Comprised of over eighty cre ations built for performance, the costumes on display offered a queer spin on what the

peteer Basil Twist, and cabaret icon Justin Vivian Bond. That scene, stretching through the early years of this century, was in many ways a reaction to Mayor Giuliani ’ s crack down on nightlife, as well as post-9/11 jin goism and security state posturing, resulting in a resurgence of seriously filthy fun. Perhaps the fullest expression of Dazzle ’ s work comes in his partnership

M IKE D RESSEL

QUEER MAXIMALISM x MACHINE DAZZLE Museum of Arts and Design, NYC Sept. 10, 2022 – Feb. 19, 2023

with MacArthur Genius grantee Taylor Mac, with the entire fifth floor of the museum devoted to the stage costumes he made for A 24-Decade History of Popular Music . This was Mac ’ s queer retelling of U.S. history through the American songbook, a les son in the past reframed through the lens of marginalized peo ple. For these performances, Dazzle designed what he termed companion costumes, allowing him to appear onstage as Mac ’ s dresser and to perform costume changes in front of the audi ence, a form of participation that transforms the traditional re lationship between costumer and performer, backstage and onstage roles. As with previous pieces, these designs incorporate kitsch and Americana, revealing the tension between whimsy and gravity

atrical design can be, blending found materials and foundational concepts with a spirit of radical reinvention. Familiar detritus like bottlecaps, plastic toy soldiers, and wine corks were refashioned, repurposed, and rearticulated. While an attention to theme and an intellectual foundation underpinned each specific design, there was a deliriously chaotic accretion to the pieces. Self-taught as an artist, Machine Dazzle seemingly uses his sewing machine as other artists might use a paintbrush or chisel, sculpting and layering, conveying a sense of the improvisational instead of following a preconceived pattern. In a way, designs like those in Queer Maximalism function like the visual equiv alent of Polari — the underground argot once spoken by buskers, beggars, circus artists, and homosexuals — an æsthetic slang

that permeates Dazzle ’ s work while offer ing some of his most intricate constructions. Several images encourage the viewer to ex amine them more closely. There ’ s the macramé dress, a cross between a plant hanger and Japanese Shibari knots, from the Stonewall Riot/ Summer of Love section of Mac ’ s show. The Civil War section features a hoop dress: an imposing cage woven of imitation barbed wire and hot dogs. Why these items? As Dazzle told The New York Times , barbed wire was invented circa the 1860s. “ And hot dogs! I read in a couple places that the American hot dog was in vented in this time, by German immi grants. ” For the decade that covers World War II, Dazzle ’ s design incorporates nods to

Part of an exhibit at Queer Maximalism x Machine Dazzle

both the atom bomb and the Slinky, both inventions of the time, mining the strains of kitsch and terror of that era. Prominently displayed in the exhibition is the outfit Mac wore for the decade of the 1960s, an allusion to Jackie Kennedy ’ s iconic pink Chanel suit and pillbox hat. Rendered in Ben-Day dots in the style of pop artist Roy Lichtenstein, with a shawl of Campbell ’ s soup cans on his shoulders, the pastiche evokes both the optimism and tragedy of the age. Dazzle ’ s visual gestures aren ’ t exclusively queer, but they do transmit additional data to the receptive and the attuned. Just as Polari made a game out words, borrowing and twisting the gram mars of the margins — Italian slang, Romani, cockney, Yiddish, and circus-speak in linguistic promiscuity — so, too, Dazzle ’ sde signs send signal to fellow travelers, with nods to the illicit, out

borne out of the incubator of the downtown performance scene where Dazzle developed and honed his signature approach. Starting in the mid- ’ 90s, the collaborative commingling of his artistic DNA began with the glitter-crusted, Solid Gold-on acid troupe the Dazzle Dancers (from which his name derives), supporting their ethos that “ Having fun is a political act, ” ac cording to cofounder Mike Albo (aka Dazzle Dazzle). The cross pollination of nightlife and performance spilled across clubs, lounges, the back rooms of bars like the Slide or the Cock, and performance spaces in collaborations with compelling “ queer dos ” and luminaries like Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art Group, pup Mike Dressel, a writer of fiction, essays, and criticism, lives in New YorkCity.

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