BABY, I LIKE IT RAW
Curated by Marie Tomanova and Thomas Beachdel
March 2 - April 4, 2017
Czech Center New York
The West has grown fat, fat, fat and gluttonous. Post-WWII, it has devoured everything and spun a global web of consumer desire, shaping identity through materialism and media.
More than only geographically isolated until the early 1990s, what once was the Eastern Bloc is now defining itself with and against a consumer history it never really had.
Raw desire and energy—youth culture—come into tension with the totalitarian ghost of Stalin. Larry Clark and Gosha Rubchinskiy greet each other in the Brutalist architectural spaces of conformity and power.
West and East mix, breed, copulate, produce. Harmony Korine, you are to the West what Boris Mikhailov is to the East. If we were to find you all young and willing, easy and free..., and put you in a room, it might be something like this show. It might smell like black cigarettes, sex, and alcohol. It would be cold. It would be hot. It would shine brilliant and real. Clothing would be cast off with innocence. There might be blood on the snow and the concrete. SOME OF YOU WILL BECOME GREAT. Some of you will be lost among the plastic bottles and dirty socks. Some of you know...Baby, I Like It RAW!
Slava Mogutin
Opening night of Baby, I Like It Raw