Curated by Lisa Phillips and Marvin Heiferman

“Change of life”? Surely it’s not a question of menopause for filmmaker and, since the early ’90s, artist John Waters, but the louche suggestion of this exhibition’s subtitle perfectly suits the sensibility of the director of Female Trouble and Desperate Living. Juxtaposition remains at the core of his oeuvre, as in Edith Tells Off Katherine Hepburn, Lana Backwards, or Movie Star Jesus. Certain works go further in their investigation of inescapable ickiness, e.g., Twelve Assholes and a Dirty Foot. The show includes seventy-six photographs and five sculptures from the past decade as well as three ’60s short films and assorted ephemera. Shock, titillation, camp, trash, prurience—convulsive beauty?

— David Rimanelli