BEVERLY FRESH - REALLY SOMETHIN ELSE
2018 (April 26 - August 5), DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, ILIn his first solo museum exhibition in Chicago, artist, rapper, musician, and world-record breaker BEVERLY FRESH takes on the incongruities, social rituals, and archetypes of the rural Midwest. Pulling from age-old performance traditions, juvenile graffiti, backyard debauchery, living room theater, and pig wrestling, Really Somethin Else is an exploration of Midwestern symbols, behaviors, and vernacular that also stems from the artist’s hometown outside Detroit, Michigan. Refuting the notion that middle America is void of culture, BEVERLY FRESH relishes in the absurd and finds common ground with other instigators who challenge cultural norms.
The exhibition is anchored by the artist’s ongoing Outskirts videos of interventionist performances (2012-present), on view throughout the galleries, and his archive of Midwestern ephemera. It offers a meandering experience of the artist’s interest in the role of performance in everyday life and how meaning is produced and shared in rural aesthetic forms.
This exhibition features several ongoing interactive works that extended the performance to the audience.
Real Deep Inside by the WILD AMERICAN DOGS (Beverly Fresh & The Crooner) a one-person talk show where you act as both the host and the guest, responding to prompts on a scrolling LED sign. Broadcast online through a streaming security camera, the artists are alerted when someone enters the talk show set and has the ability to communicate with the participant through a two-way speaker, playing the role of the "sidekick" to the host.
https://vimeo.com/channels/realdeepinside
4A Good Time Call, a window installation facing the Chicago Transit Authority train service platform advertising a good time. New outgoing messages created bi-weekly, and new incoming messages are left daily by curious callers. Fliers and graffiti were also left in back alleys, bathrooms and hallways around the city advertising the number (872) 222-8493.
Real Deep Inside by the WILD AMERICAN DOGS (Beverly Fresh & The Crooner) a one-person talk show where you act as both the host and the guest, responding to prompts on a scrolling LED sign. Broadcast online through a streaming security camera, the artists are alerted when someone enters the talk show set and has the ability to communicate with the participant through a two-way speaker, playing the role of the "sidekick" to the host.
https://vimeo.com/channels/realdeepinside
4A Good Time Call, a window installation facing the Chicago Transit Authority train service platform advertising a good time. New outgoing messages created bi-weekly, and new incoming messages are left daily by curious callers. Fliers and graffiti were also left in back alleys, bathrooms and hallways around the city advertising the number (872) 222-8493.
