BRIAN KENNY

My butt in 2010

2009-12-06T14:00:00.000-05:00

*Photo by Slava Mogutin

My butt, I mean FULL MOON, will watch over the dates of the 23-29 of August 2010 to bring you joy and physical health. On the cosmic apex of the 29th, when the bikini meets the bicycle seat, a new vibration will energize your path towards higher consciousness....

*Photo by Marsha Brady

Zachary from the 19-25 of July will deliver cake to the running men of 2010

*photo by Robin Black

And Kalvin, the national treasure of the 28th until Independence Day will wave flags for you under the water

a lovely calender by BUTT Magazine full of many moons to pass the time beyond 2009

Tree Son in the Skies

2009-12-07T15:00:00.006-05:00

Fresh ink

2009-11-28T21:09:00.000-05:00

Slava, Gio and I went to the Converse launch party for the new Terence Koh shoe at the Cooper Union clocktower and the event featured a whole crew of sexy model boys sitting infront of easels making brush strokes, but there was no paint thus the pads of paper were blank. So we snagged the cutest model and took him back our apartment and used our backs as easels to make some art to look at. Slava photographed the process.

Tricks with treats!

2009-10-31T13:07:00.006-04:00

Sure to rot your sweet tooth. =) Happy Halloween

Shake your ashes in space

2009-11-28T14:02:00.004-05:00

My feature in the new Plastique Magazine

Alago Toppings

2009-11-26T21:37:00.013-05:00

Rough Gods
Tender Separation

FALLing ASLEEP

2009-11-15T13:55:00.005-05:00

* Photo by Slava Mogutin

Burning the Candle at Both Ends

2009-11-05T14:11:00.005-05:00

Slava recently curated a fantastic online group exhibition now on view entitled "Burning the Candle at Both Ends" for Visual Aids, an arts organization that programs AIDS and HIV awareness into art through various exhibitions both in galleries (like the Postcards From the Edge benefit), and online.

Slava's curatorial statement:

In the documentary Jack Smith and the Destruction of Atlantis, the luminary New York artist and filmmaker, interviewed shortly before his death in 1989, provocatively proclaimed that AIDS was the most glamorous way to die. He stated that he intentionally engaged in bareback sex in order to be infected with HIV, asking, "Why should only blacks and Puerto-Ricans be dying of AIDS and not me?"

Unlike most of his colleagues who struggled with the stigma and consequences of this awful virus, Jack Smith embraced it, going as far as glorifying it. He happily exchanged his underground celebrity status for a patient's bed in an AIDS care hospice where he was fed three hearty meals a day, up until the day when he could no longer eat.

Commenting on Smith's revelation, Thomas Kraemer, an independent researcher from Corvallis, Oregon, writes, "Today, I suspect people would be less charitable if they knew HIV 'gift giving' or 'bug chasing' was involved. However, [Smith] was clearly a pioneer in recognizing that the mythology around the heroic deaths from AIDS in the 1980s was 'glamorous' in an artistic way, if not in a rational way. Today, an AIDS death is no longer glamorous because there is no theatre of the absurd surrounding it. You get put in a standard nursing home to die with heterosexual geriatric patients."

Was it a coincidence that AIDS wiped out some of the most radical and experimental artists of the 80s? And was it a coincidence that they were just as radical and experimental in their private lives as in their art, "burning the candle at both ends"?

Everyone loves dead artists. Just try to imagine what the contemporary art world would be if Jack Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring, Paul Thek, Félix González-Torres, Mark Morrisroe, Peter Hujar and David Wojnarowicz -- to name just a few most iconic AIDS casualties -- were still among us.

Would they be as radical if they didn't know that their days were numbered? Or would they, too, end up doing Levi's and Gap commercials? How much did their chemical and hormonal imbalances contribute to their radicalism, their vision and practice? And would they be as celebrated now if they hadn't burnt their candles too soon?

These were the questions that went through my mind while I spent hours going through the immense Visual AIDS archives and looking for clues and answers in thousands of slides, folder after folder, page after page.

I couldn't help using the work of David Wojnarowicz as a starting point for my selection. I read his first Russian translations back as a teenager in Moscow and it was the most powerful and overwhelming introduction to the pain and agony of the AIDS epidemic in Reagan-era America. His work became a major inspiration for my own writings, art and activism.

Focusing on lesser known names, I discovered an array of great artists -- both fallen soldiers, such as Robert Blanchon, Jimmy DeSana and Frank Moore, and our contemporaries Rene Capone, David King, Rogelio Mendoza, Gregory Veney and Frederick Weston.

Yes, everyone loves dead artists. But that's exactly why Visual AIDS plays such an important role in archiving and publicizing the work of those who are still among us, living and struggling with the virus that defaced and distorted the entire course and history of contemporary art.

My favorite pieces from the show:

"Gulliver Awake," 1994-1995
Frank Moore
oil on canvas on panel with enamel frame, 40" x 74"

"In the Bedroom #1 (Humpty)," 2002
Jonathan Leiter
mixed media, 22" x 8.5"

Untitled, 2000
Rogello Mendoza
acrylic on canvas, size n/a

"Hedgehog Boy Comic Book (Detail)," 2008
Rene Capone
ink on paper, 8.5" x 11"

"Untitled (Map)," 1990
David Wojnarowicz
mixed media, 33" x 48" x 0.5"

see the whole show:

BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS

The Pink Spacestation (G-String Theory Force)

2009-10-21T19:50:00.017-04:00

Today is October 22, and in Chicago a giant panty parlor and bra bandanery has finally revealed her Victorian Secrets, including those left behind by TEAM B.E.G of N.Y.C

B Brian
E Erin
G Geoff

armed to the brushes we confirmed

Photographic evidence taken by all three of us, touch of pink.

*Wall and door paintings, giant pink lampshade, and chandelier manifested by the talented GHS team for new VS flagships. Thats right, space station.

I Like Kobe Leah

2009-10-23T17:28:00.007-04:00

Kobe made my day by adding
a portrait of me to his ongoing serie s
of sexy cartoon portrait comment cards!

Proclamation of a Mancipation

2007-12-01T00:02:00.001-05:00

Embracer runs 50 yards....
and.. BOOOOM!
Downtube Mother Fucker!
so fat you broke the TV so fast!
sucking surge on Con Edision fat ass compass!
no hard feelings, just wasted time
and of this moment, it's showtime!
turn on the camera
I can see it works, your face in this light
someone up to me, no losers
i have to confess
they all eat ass, hungry and challenging
holding their names to a team
so perfectly unconscious to my reaction..
how about this:
I have a blog!
don't ask don't tell people things I cant tell them on TV?
streaming inches away...
streaming in my mouth
then moving on
and coming back for more
a long dragon vanishing down the drain
my children are swimming now
and I've returned my videos
a faint smell of cock
are you gay?
yes
OK, rollback Dont Ask Dont Tell!
tell em, all faggots can openly protect american big business money with their lives.
let's find out what happens!
Hey soldier!
Hey Rainbow Rambo!
GI 69!
Private Positions!
Did you bag a rag?
Did you piss on this?
most honorable business orientation, you too can blow your mind
because we're giving it away for free,
so it must be good.

Eh, So it, uh, must be good eh?
Yeh a little good times? yah Know?
Feelin, uh, easy and good yeh?
Smooth moves eh? All night long? yeh?
yeh nyc'e face all nite eh?
a little free dinner yeh?
yeh? huh? Yeh?

puddle hummer

2006-12-20T03:37:00.001-05:00

spoon futures

shaved heads at christmas time....
bleeding feet
cliff diver positions

jerseys, back packs
unattended tube sacks
drawings that never cum bucket in half an hour
drawing cum bucks back if buy now
double mint angermen gum
steaks for dogs,
sleep in my son
the guns are are all downstairs

Paper Plan

2009-10-16T23:49:00.002-04:00

I'm silky-quantum freckly-communication, and as above, so below.

Ay-Yo Clouds Chicago

2009-09-29T21:54:00.013-04:00

*Team BEG oiling up victorian secrets off Lake on Michigan.

One of the best public sculptures I've ever seen. Anish Kapoor's "Cloud Gate"

Family piles in yellow and blue, I was here

2009-08-14T21:13:00.006-04:00

*(Yellow and blue are colors of the my family crest, including the flor de lis. This was part of an exhibit in Athens on antique wallpaper by Geoff Howell.)

smoking peels of well-being entertainment chemicals

Embarkment benefits and hulking maternal emission observations

mountains of garbage citations for the sunburned boy

systmatic executive thinking piles

secret city stay-cation destination

atmospheric , long-lasting documentary family stones.

2009-10-09T22:03:00.002-04:00

Victorian Secrets

2009-10-04T20:29:00.010-04:00

drawings from my recent trip to Chicago..

WHAT I SAW TODAY

2009-10-02T23:07:00.006-04:00

This is what I saw today (and it made my day) on Richard Haines' blog "What I Saw Today". It's an elegant documentation in drawings of Haines' eye on New Yorkers and what we're all wearing...

WHAT I SAW TODAY

2009-09-10T23:05:00.006-04:00

(*I'm silkyparallelfreckly and the purple mushroom cloud blooming bush was in Lisbon)

Something from my ass(ets)

2009-09-09T19:44:00.006-04:00

*I'm silky-freckly are these photos fell of out of the basketball shorts of my mind.

(Pix by Slava and I in Berlin, Paris, Coney Island of '05).

Andrey and the Beanstalk

2009-08-28T20:20:00.004-04:00

Andrey Bartenev signing our guestbook last night.

Night Creature Feature

2009-08-02T16:08:00.005-04:00

new self-portraits

Stand by Herr Mann

2009-08-02T15:05:00.009-04:00

These are some portraits I made of artist Matthias Herrmann for his new book, Toscana 3.

Boomer meat dear complete, new drawings

2009-07-25T22:16:00.005-04:00

Esopus of Independence

2009-07-20T21:56:00.012-04:00

Independence Day weekend photos in Phoenicia, NY by Slava and I