"Ken Weaver - Hillbilly Hardcore : Profonde Amerique"
2002-02-03 until 2002-03-09
g-module
Paris, , FR France

Ken Weaver's exhibition Hillbilly Hardcore: Profonde Amérique is a pictorial, conceptual and physical exploration of the denigrated, yet defiant citizens populating the rural and suburban underbelly of the United States. Through drawing, painting, installation and video, dimwitted rednecks, spaced-out stoners and kick-ass rock n' rollers with bad teeth, bad language and bad attitudes are as aggressive as they are vulnerable.

Ken Weaver spent his first decade in New York creating theatre and performance art, now being utilized in his works by staging friends and actors to recreate the characters from his rural/suburban past. It is the artist's belief that through artifice, one can playfully gain an insight into who we really are behind the mask of respectability, professionalism and presentation. With titles such as My Mother is a Travel Agent for Guilt Trips!, Drink Till He's Cute! and Your Proctologist Called, They Found Your Head!, a post-pop sensibility is displayed by combining psychoanalysis, comedy, representational painting, drawing and installation. Hillbilly Hardcore: Profonde Amérique exhibits the simultaneous attraction / repulsion of sub genre characters.

Last year, Ken Weaver exhibited the series, Rednecks, Stoners and Sunsets (2001) at Arena@Feed (now Schroeder/Romero) in Brooklyn. He recently participated in group exhibitions including: 2000 Clowns (2000) at the University Galleries at Illinois State and The UFO Show (1999-2001), which began at the University Galleries and toured to other venues around the country. His 'new extra heavy' rock 'n' roll band, Growler, plays regularly in local dives around Brooklyn. Ken Weaver received his MFA from Long Island University, NY and his BFA from the University of Florida. Since 1986, he lives and works in Brooklyn.

IMAGE:
My Foot and Your Ass Need to Meet!
Var. 1, 2002
Oil on Canvas
43 x 51 cm (20 x 17 inches)

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