Oil industry-and-art-world scion-turned-graffiti artist Dash Snow has always done his best work with semen. As he explained last January in a New York Magazine cover story titled, "Warhol's Children" [he's the tattooed one on the right]:
“I’ve always been a big fan of the Post, and I remember in 1992, or whenever the f*ck it was, Desert Storm, the Gulf War? Remember? I’d always read the Post, and there’d be really rad headlines about it,” said Snow. “I was just down for it! I’m down with anyone, even if they’re bad people, if they’re just, like, anti-American, you know what I mean? This is a series I’m working on,” he pointed at some collages on the wall with lots of pictures of Saddam Hussein, whose likeness is also tattooed on Snow’s arm. “They’re old headlines, and they all have come on them. Yeah, mine.”When he went to the Saatchi opening, Snow and fellow BFF executed one of their Hamster Nest installations in an expensive London hotel room. To make a Hamster's Nest, Dash and artist/collaborator Dan Colen and friends "shred up 30 to 50 phone books, yank around all the blankets and drapes, turn on the taps, take off their clothes, and do drugs—mushrooms, coke, ecstasy—until they feel like hamsters."Snow has been working with his own ejaculate a lot lately; his contribution to the Saatchi show was a piece called F*ck the Police, which featured sprays of his sperm on a collagelike installation of tabloid cutouts, headlines about corrupt cops.
The opening of a new Hamster's Nest installation at Deitch Projects in SoHo joyously coincided with the debut of Snow's latest sperm-based work, a baby daughter born to girlfriend Jade the day before.
That's a still-pregnant Jade there on the exhibition poster, nesting in Nest. To celebrate Secret Magic Nico Snow's fortuitous arrival, if not her attendance at her dad's happening in a gallery described as "resembling a Chuck E. Cheese ballroom—albeit more flammable and built on a bender," artist Terence Koh brought a pair of baby booties.
Snow & Colen's "Nest" runs through August 18th at Deitch. [deitch.com]
David Velasco's report from the preview of Hamster's Nest@Deitch [artforum, images, too]
Props from Snow's Irak crew: Secret Magic Nico Snow welcome to the world [irakny.com]
Warhol's Children [nymag]
"Q. signs of pregnancy in hamsters? A. [They] may build a second nest" [answers.yahoo.com]
I wonder how many punches to the eye it would really take to make that guy "feel like a hamster."
[take a number, mac. also, hampsterdance.com -ed.]