Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
Dennis Cooper’s GIF books include ZAC’s CORAL REEF (2018), ZAC’S FREIGHT ELEVATOR, a novel (2016), ZAC’S CONTROL PANEL (2015), ZAC'S HAUNTED HOUSE, a novel (2015), and ZAC’S DRUG BINGE, a novel (forthcoming, spring 2020). They are published by Kiddiepunk Press and are free to download at www.kiddiepunk.com/zines.htm. His GIF works have been exhibited at Art Basel (2019), Cabinet Gallery (London), Galerie Balice Hertling (Paris), The New Museum (NYC), and elsewhere.
WHEN THE CHOICE BETWEEN lingering in front of a video projector or hitting a half-dozen other galleries is increasingly a cinch, the jolting energy, nerve, and intricacy of twenty-four-year-old Ryan Trecartin’s work in the medium comes as no small shock. An abiding interest in indie rock, goth, psychedelia, and other hot topics won’t distinguish his practice from that of other artists of his generation. But everything aesthetic about his videos—from the baroque screenplays that polish flippant teen slang into cascading soliloquies to the dueling fascinations with profound loneliness and extremely
DENNIS COOPER
1 THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, TWIN CINEMA (MATADOR) I’m not so giddily in love with these Vancouver-based indie rock perfectionists that I couldn’t have used this space to write a long, rational essay about them titled something like “God Not Dead?”
2 DUNGEN, TA DET LUGNT (KEMADO) For some reason, in Sweden it’s OK to take the passing of ’60s psychedelia very personally.
3 SUNN0))), BLACK ONE (SOUTHERN LORD) Apparently, one way to renew rock is to keep charring its fundaments until it falls into that category by default.
4 XIU XIU, LA FORET (5 RUE CHRISTINE) People who say singer Jamie
WHEN EIGHTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Henry Darger died in 1973 and his secret trove of art and writings was unearthed by his nosy Chicago landlords, the term “outsider art” was new, having been proposed only the previous year by art historian Roger Cardinal as an English alternative to art brut. At the time, the work of artists like Adolf Wölfli, Simon Rodia, and the Rev. Howard Finster, to the extent that it was known at all, was effectively stigmatized as a form of arts and crafts practiced by unusually creative religious fanatics, conspiracy theorists, and the mentally ill. But the discovery of Darger’s
DENNIS COOPER
1. Destroyer, Your Blues (Merge Sounds) Sounds like a young Leonard Cohen on lots of Ecstasy.
2. A.C. Newman, The Slow Wonder (Matador Records) Newman, (most of) the brains behind the spookily catchy, detail-obsessed New Pornographers, pares down his sound without losing an iota of the band’s sociopathic genius.
3. Animal Collective, Sung Tongs (Fat Cat) Spin this primo example of corrosive post-psychedelia, then see the band blow it open live.
4. Guided by Voices, Half Smiles of the Decomposed (Matador Records) The final album by my favorite—and, coincidentally, the greatest—rock band
ART HISTORY HAS long maintained a church and state–style separation between naive, unsophisticated work by so-called outsider artists and work whose construction and style are unmistakably savvy and sociable. Henry Darger, the Chicago janitor who spent his downtime secretly making obsessive paintings, is a good example of the consequence of these distinctions, remaining an honored guest of the art world rather than a bona fide star.
In rock music, this prejudice is reversed: The outsider is the ultimate insider. Rock’s history has been one of constant reinvention by artists too crazy or ignorant