Metro Pulse/Artbeat/Shiteater Blues

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This spring's last thesis show provokes a pantsload of controversy

by Heather Joyner

As someone who's expected to be somewhat polite most of the time, I admit it's a kick to proclaim that a specific artist's show is shit. Seriously.

Hamo Bahnam's sparse but evocative M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition titled Shiteater Blues concerns itself with nothing but (no pun intended) anuses, be they two-dimensional or crafted from cardboard and wax and hung on the wall, more or less spewing all manner of crap. Viewers' reactions might be disgust or confusion or amusement or all of the above, but they won't soon forget the experience.

Which leaves us questioning Bahnam's message. Whereas our past exposure to his work since his arrival from the greater Los Angeles area almost three years ago has perhaps led us to conclude that Bahnam's art is a tad pornographic, what we're seeing now could be called downright obscene. Yet Bahnam is no mere sensationalist. Through his phallic and/or nose-like anal appendages spouting turds into jars or onto the gallery floor, Bahnam has created a striking metaphor for the institutional artist's condition. And no, your mother wouldn't like this stuff a'tall. Liking it is not necessarily the point. I doubt that photographer Andres Serrano intended to delight us with his Piss Christ (a crucifix immersed in the artist's urine that outraged folks a decade or so ago and pushed arguments about NEA funding into the spotlight). Rather, he forced a question regarding limits in art.

If art can serve purposes beyond beauty, then what might those purposes be? In the 1970s tradition of painters like Philip Guston (known especially for his jaunty Klansmen), art certainly can have a political bent. But "political" is many things, as well. Writes art critic Robert Hughes, "Guston didn't fool himself for a moment into believing that his art, successful or not, could have the smallest effect on American politics. It was just that without speaking up, he would have felt like a hypocrite...here was American society [during the Vietnam War] tearing itself apart, and there was American art maintaining its calm refusal of the world, its pretense that content was irrelevant."

On the other hand, the 1990s taught us that creating subversive, content-driven art in order to be hip, or defending pure trash in the name of high-minded tolerance is simply ridiculous. However, without a gaggle of right-wingers fearfully responding to popular art, much "art" might go unnoticed. As Hughes put it, "[Conservatives] credit art with a power it does not have... show people the wrong photo by Robert Mapplethorpe and suddenly America will be full of millions of priapic fists seeking the wrong orifices."

So what is Bahnam after? Personally, I think it's too bad this show is not more of a retrospective, given that Bahnam, like Guston, has long admired the "Low Art" of MAD Magazine and cartoonists like Robert Crumb, and has in the past produced some amazing art linked to that genre. Born in Lebanon and raised in California, Bahnam tells me that growing up he was "culturally sheltered" and discouraged to discuss his father's Iraqi roots. It was not until he saw a parody of an art opening on the television show Bosom Buddies—with a man nailed to the wall and a painting of a red dot on white—that he thought much about the contemporary art world per se. More involved as a drummer in the high school band than as an art student, Bahnam was in art class for only one year prior to college and made what he calls Pink Panther windchimes. But moving on to Pasadena City College jump-started his academic and artistic career. It's where he says he "learned how to learn and began loving school."

Since then, Bahnam's attended Long Beach State and been granted a full scholarship for Masters-level study at UT. Nevertheless, with that privilege comes a degree of expected conformity, however subtle. Straying from the printmaking medium into sculptural work has meant risking not being consistently expert at what he does. But if actively exploring one's possibilities and failing on occasion (even on the graduate level) is not what higher education is about, higher education's not worth much. Bahnam has clearly struggled with why he's doing what he does, despite his deep love for art. His experience questioning and defining his motivation should make him a better KMA workshop teacher later this month and a more understanding professor in the future.

"At times, I've felt that what I'm doing isn't good enough...that the art itself is so bad, it's making crap itself," Bahnam says. But seeing his pieces at the Ewing reminds us that Bahnam has both a unique perspective and the talent to bring that perspective to light whether we're into shit or not. He also extends himself as lead singer for the band the Come-Ons, Longbranch Saloon favorites for more than a year now. Wearing a Mexican wrestling mask and rolling around, he may not do any more (for some) as a performer than he does as an artist. But Bahnam's refusal to censor himself or his pieces in the current exhibit could never be considered dull.

As my mother's always said, "Not everyone likes vanilla."