San Francisco Inn, 385 9th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
April 28 & 29, 2017
Pizza Party and Clueless screening: Friday, April 28, 7:30pm - 9:30pm
T2R Performance: Saturday, April 29, 6:00pm - 9:00pm
Curated by Maddie Klett and Rosa Tyhurst
Teenager. It is a very descriptive word; it packs a lot of emotion and imagery into three syllables… I couldn’t believe after all of our agonizing over ‘youth’ themes, that we have overlooked such an obvious one--the teenage condition
–Bonnie McKee co-writer (w/ Katy Perry) of Teenage Dream
Teenage Dream is a group exhibition featuring the works of seven 20-to-30-somethings who communicate issues of the recent past and coming-of-age experiences.
Inspired in part by the portrayal of euphoric youthful reverie in Katy Perry’s 2010 song and music video of the same name, Teenage Dream is half throwback and half wistful hope for the future. The song’s mention in conversation offers a time and a place, prompting a young adult to locate his or her own life seven years ago. The artists in this exhibition consider the objects and experiences that have fostered conceptions of representation, identity and sexuality in America today from a critical distance. Laura Rokas’s (b.1989, Montréal, Canada) work R.O.K.A.S. (Rage Out Kut and Scratch), 2016, comprises of hand-sewn patches that make up a self-portrait, akin to the exterior of a high-schooler’s Jansport backpack. Mattson Fields’s (b. 1991, Fairfax, VA) work N69, 2017, highlights the sexual semiotics of a Nintendo 64 console - a pink latex tongue extending from the machine’s concealed innards transforms the “typical” teenage boy’s lifeline. In Mommy, 2015, Maggie Lee’s (b.1987, Rahway, NJ) feature film, Lee returns to her childhood home in New Jersey, creating a portrait of her mother before and after her unexpected death.
In this light, the common dingy motel room takes on different meanings. It could be as Perry mentioned, the location where she builds a fort out of sheets with her sweetheart, a place for illicit under-age drinking, or as displayed in Jamie Turner’s (b. 1991, Columbus, OH) instructional binder What To Do in a Motel Room, 2017, the scene of numerous political scandals. Occupying a space between public and private, the motel room has become more shareable with the advent of social media. Richard-Jonathan Nelson’s (b. 1987, Savannah, GA) queen-size quilt, Every time I think of you it was so-so, 2017, culls images from the television shows Dawson’s Creek and The Real Housewives, among others, illuminating the compression of culture from the last twenty years in the language of internet memes. In her performance T2R Luxe, 2017, T2R (b. 1989, New York, NY) activates Nelson’s quilt on the bed, as well as oversized papier-mâché hotel objects, when she sleeps over in the motel room on Saturday night. T2R showers, takes selfies for Instagram, and Skypes friends while exhibition viewers come and go. A self portrait, as if from the vantage point of an unknown surveillance camera, Maryam Yousif’s (b.1985, Baghdad, Iraq) ceramic relief More than a Decade Ago, 2017, of a figure sitting alone in the room offers a tender yet naive contrast to T2R’s exhibitionist performance.
In her song, Perry suggests that we don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back. Yet the artists in Teenage Dream demonstrate an impulse to do just that–embarking on the often disquieting task of opening-up, and transfiguring their adolescence and personal histories.