IN YOUR FACE: Beautiful Dirty Dirty Rich

The tables have turned: instead of telling you what we think about art shows, we’re heading out to gallery openings to get In Your Face and find out what the beautiful people think. Armed with one camera and a microphone, Kristin and I headed to Marx and Zavattero, a gallery near Union Square. David Hevel‘s quirky mash-up of faux flowers, taxidermy, and celebrity tributes brought out the eccentrics. As a Bernie Madoff-inspired rhino head with snot oozing out of its nostrils looked on, we asked some gallery goers about which animal they would like to be represented by, and which celebrity they think Hevel should pay tribute to next.

The Ascension of Saint Angelina

Bernie Madoff

Heaven Can’t Wait (Michael Jackson & Farrah Fawcett)

Michael Arcega
“If David were to make a sculpture of me, I’d want it to be some kind of tiger or a lion of sorts, but it would probably actually be a monkey.”

Jake Lindsay-Ceniceros
“Ducks. I have an affinity for wooden ducks, specifically. I know a wooden duck isn’t an animal, but it’s the archetypical duck emblem that for some reason resonates with me. I like the greyhound sculptures but I would like to see more poultry, I think he could do well with poultry. I work at SCRAP and I’d like to see what he’d do with our materials. David’s work is a glamorous ultra fabulous goulash of imagery and items.”

Chelsea Staub [center] with her roommates
“I like the rhino with the snot. It’s really obscure. I haven’t seen anything like it before, and it’s really gross which I find oddly fascinating. If David were to make a sculpture of me, it’d probably be a cat. I like to nap.”

Stephanie Syjuco
“An antelope because I’m always in a rush.”

Sung Choi-Hevel
“If David were to make a sculpture of me I would say it would be a doe because they’re large animals and they’re very powerful yet they have that outside appearance of being innocent and sweet. And they’re elegant and have long necks.”

Kathy Stinus
“An animal to represent me? Hopefully not a baboon because I know that’s one of his favorites. Not something cute like a bunny rabbit…it wouldn’t be a cheetah or a rhinoceros head. Maybe a pit bull.”

Son Le [left] with a friend
“David should pay tribute to Britney Spears. The DJ just played “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and we were just talking about how that video represented a cultural turning point. Before that, there wasn’t as much targeting of people 18 and under and now tweens are the cultural force which people spend money through. Nobody else besides Miley Cyrus made money the last three years. [Britney Spears’s] life has become a mode of conception. Everyone was sucking up her insanity like free booze at a gallery opening.”

Add your own photos of the show and see more beautiful people in our KQED Arts’ In Your Face Flickr group!