Gerry Bibby, Candy Says Big Decisions Endless Revisions, 2008, silk screen on paper. Installation view, Mica Moca, Berlin. Photo: Nick Ash.
“CANDY SAYS, ‘I’ve come to hate my body and all that it requires in this world.’” Against a sugar-sweet melody, Lou Reed opens the first track of the Velvet Underground’s 1969 self-titled album by quoting Warhol’s beloved superstar Candy Darling, who resolutely revised her body as well as her gender identity via hormone injections and drag. One could say that such a state of exhausted subjectivity and fractured self-image is a pervasive contemporary condition; this is, in fact, a central premise of Gerry Bibby’s performative encounters with a wide range of media. In chorus with sources of cultural critique including avant-garde literature and post-punk music, Bibby works to transform the structures, whether institutional or linguistic, that produce a subject’s experience of that condition—an aspiration that resonates with the Berlin-based artist’s formative years of social
Artforum print subscribers have full access to this article. If you are a subscriber, sign in below.
Not registered for artforum.com?
SUBSCRIBE NOW for only $50 a year—65% off the newsstand price—and get the print magazine plus full online access to this issue and our archive.*
Order the PRINT EDITION of the February 2013 issue for $17 or the ONLINE EDITION for $5.99.
* This rate applies to U.S. domestic subscriptions.