✿ It’s Just Business, It Isn’t Personal ✿
☺Avoiding Negative Thoughts ⁽¹ ²⁾ ☺Welcome to Maturity ☺Everything is Going the Way I Planned ☺It’s a Beautiful World Filled with Perfect Things ☺Everything’s Going to Be Okay, I Think ☺If I Were You I Wouldn’t Worry About It ☺West ☺Misery Loves Company ☺Basic/Basic ☺Dianetics Ch. 8, Contangion of Aberration ☺It’s Just Business, It’s Not Personal ☺Tiger Practice
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Copyright © 2023 Kevin Dudley. ☺ All rights reserved ☺.
Feb 23 - Mar, 15 2019
Third Room Projects, Bedstuy, BK
The Mile High Club Doesn’t Count If You Just Jerk Off in the Bathroom (Pepto Bismol-Pediasure-Vodka Cocktail/Piece for Pussy Niggas 4), 2019
Inkjet print mounted on foamcore, fake hotel cards (laminated inkjet prints), LED lights.
Right: Casino Study (“Hospitaliano”), 2018, Inkjet print on vinyl canvas
The Kardashian Piece (Robert Kardashian/Robert Soma), 2019
Aluminum display, fur felt cowboy hat purchased in Reno, NV, two neck pillows made from Donald J. Trump Executive Collection shirts, two pairs of Arthur George by Robert Kardashian socks, bootleg Marc by Marc Jacobs backpack with speaker and MP3 player, Vineyard Vines silk tie, laminated print of artist’s maternal grandparents (Robert and Mitsue Soma) with keychain, Cheerios, glue
Goat/Sheep/Capricorn Bench w/ Rosé Fountain (No. 1, Oprah Answers Everything / My Battle with Bipolar Disorder), 2019
Plastic urn covered in plaster, acrylic spray paint, faux rock finish spray paint, epoxy resin, vinyl tile, plywood, used sheepskin Ugg boots, faux fur, Barefoot rosé, fountain pump, silver tray, cornstarch, magazines, fake plants
Goat/Sheep/Capricorn Bench w/ Rosé Fountain (no. 2, Top Gut Doctor Urges “Throw Out This Dangerous Vegetable”), 2019
Plastic urn covered in plaster, acrylic spray paint, faux rock finish spray paint, epoxy resin, vinyl tile, plywood, used sheepskin Ugg boots, faux fur, Barefoot rosé, fountain pump, cotton towel, fake grapes
Snake Rug (Get Busy Getting or Get Busy Getting Got), 2018
Commercially printed cotton rug
Turn Back the Clock (It’s Just Business, It’s Not Personal/Piece for Pussy Niggas 6), 2019
Inkjet print mounted on foamcore with inkjet stickers and LED light
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Third Room Projects is proud to present It’s Just Business, It’s Not Personal, a solo exhibition by Kevin Dudley.
In this body of work, Dudley engages in a kind of non-place making. Products and found objects are modified and collaged together. 3-dimensional works are equalized with 2-dimentional representations. Circling in on themselves, the works become a multi-media ouroboros of chintzy luxury. Dudley cunningly questions how value and potential are weighed in contemporary culture.
The casino resort lobby becomes a simulacrum of quality, history, culture, and hospitality. It symbolizes the half-way point between riches and ruin, with both possibilities still somewhere just out of reach. Decoration and discomfort live together. Appearances matter. Alcohol, tobacco products, and over-the-counter drugs are ways of managing feelings and expectations. They are offered up as a reference to a bourgeois purgatory of temporary relief—a way to take up your time.
Dudley is interested in examining the place between “origin” and “destination.” Rosé fountains, cheap Grecian vases on goat-bench plinths, lend a decorative edge to being herded into a liminal space. The show raises questions of what it means to strive for or reach a conclusion–to get somewhere. Is potential a given thing, or must it be tirelessly worked at?
- Djavan Nascimento