Hello Nasty
Curated by Chris Bors

Chris Bors, Paul Brainard, Dawn Frasch, Aaron Johnson, Hein Koh, Tom Sanford, Aaron Zimmerman

July 11 – August 9, 2013

Cindy Rucker Gallery presents Hello Nasty, a group show featuring work by Chris Bors, Paul Brainard, Dawn Frasch, Aaron Johnson, Hein Koh, Tom Sanford, and Aaron Zimmerman curated by Chris Bors. The work in this show is grotesque, in every sense of the word; outlandish actions, disfigured forms, and bizarre scenes pepper the works and transform the gallery into a twisted Freak Show.

“Tastes great, less filling,” was the classic argument about Miller Lite brand beer in a series of commercials that first ran in 1973. They became a hit because of their odd mix of B-list celebrities and athletes trying to out-shout their opponents. Regardless, the beer is nasty. Using an inexplicable strain of convoluted logic or attention deficit disorder, it’s possible to relate Miller Lite with this group exhibition titled Hello Nasty—that takes its name from the fifth studio album by the Beastie Boys—in which all of the work is nasty one way or another. Depicting the abject is not an insular practice for these artists, but one that they must share with the outside world. All of the artists gathered here take their craft and imagery to the extreme, confronting the viewer and making us uncomfortable with their representations of nastiness.

Chris Bors is a New York-based artist whose work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, White Columns, Envoy Gallery and the Bronx Museum of the Arts in New York, Randall Scott Gallery in Washington, D.C., Casino Luxembourg in Luxembourg, Bahnwarterhaus in Esslingen, Germany, Bongout in Berlin and Archimede Staffolini Gallery in Nicosia, Cyprus. Bors has written for Artforum.com, Art in America, ArtReview, and Artnet.com, among many other publications.

“Hello Nasty”, Huffington Post, Liz Isogna, August 1, 2013. Download PDF.