Paul Myoda at Friedrich Petzel - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions

Art in America, May, 1994 by Simon Taylor

This impressive debut exhibition, incorporating sculptures, a video titled Strawman and accompanying storyboards, was alternately funny and disturbing, outlandish and sinister. Dominating the first room, Clawump (all works 1993) consisted of a cowhide spread out on a pile of straw, and it might well have passed for a rug were it not for the incongruous goose feet sewn onto it and a highly prominent asshole in the center. Approaching the sculpture with some trepidation, I had to scrutinize the rounded pink mass carefully before determining that the asshole--like the ants embedded in the enamel paint highlighting its rim--was, in fact, real. The hide had been cut and tanned so ad to preserve the sphincter's musculature at its center. Other hybrid sculptures involving animal parts were Burrolick, Slapther and Snung. Also, five wooden figures of the kind used by artists for drawing exercises, collectively titled Strawman Strokers, were mounted on the walls to resemble phalluses in positions ranging from "Totally Limp" to "Fully Erect," suggestive of a wayward masculinity.

A 15-minute black-and-white film (transferred to video) titled Strawman was the exhibition's piece de resistance. Here Myoda played the role of a tragicomic scarecrow in a six-part fable explaining how the mythical Mandrake root acquired its aphrodisiac powers. In the opening scene the scarecrow struggles free from a wooden cross to chase away a stuffed goose from the seeds in the field. A female narrator relates in a deadpan monotone that the Strawman's hatred for the goose turns into sexual attraction, announcing, "He wants to copulate with the goose," whereupon the Strawman penetrates the bird. Following this, he masturbates his straw phallus with a handful of ants and has intercourse with a cow as well as a vaginal slit in the ground. The influence of Paul McCarthy, whose sculpture of a young boy fucking a goat caused a minor scandal last season at Luhring Augustine and whose performances from the '70s included one of the artist having sex with raw meat in a cheap hotel room, seems apparent in this wonderfully depraved work.

While adopting the camera-work of porn films, including close-ups of penetration and a "money shot"--or ejaculation--Myoda's film is not erotic so much as ludicrous. The Strawman, whose elemental life consists of fucking and sleeping, may be characterized, using Michael Bernstein's phrase, as an "abject hero": as long as he's sexually aroused he's content, but after each orgasm he collapses. To achieve the ultimate orgasm the Strawman creates a straw noose and hangs himself from a scaffold, his ejaculate producing the seed of the Mandrake plant. In the final episode, artist Ronald Jones appears as the Mandrake Collector. After uprooting the plant with the help of his dog, he descends into a state of ecstatic madness. This scene is narrated in an upbeat tone reminiscent of a PBS nature documentary, as if to lampoon the detachment of scientific positivism.

An important subtext of the film concerns the conflict between productive labor and Strawman's relentless and self-destructive pursuit of sexual pleasure. On several visits to the gallery, I saw viewers who seemed offended by Myoda's "bad taste" turn away in disgust. It required an uninhibited sense of humor to see this show; I would certainly recommend that children of all ages see the Strawman video.