Show Gallery and Hat & Beard Press are pleased to present “I Wanted To Be An Actor, but I Could Never Remember My Lines,” a new series of works by Brendan Donnelly, including 16-framed collages, a large-scale collage mural and a DVD installation. The exhibition opening coincides with the release of his monograph from Hat & Beard Press.
Opening Reception
October 22, 6pm-9pm
Exhibition Through November 22, 2022
Donnelly is an interdisciplinary artist working at the nexus of being both an aesthete and perpetuator of American subculture in all of its ephemera; his irreverent work is nestled at the intersection of fine art and lowbrow culture.
His obsession with Los Angeles subculture and pop culture has culminated in a collection of ephemera that illustrates his specific cosmology. Donnelly has spent over 30 years collecting ephemera that have shaped his world view— sourced from movie memorabilia stores, head shots, souvenir shops, newsstands, adult video stores, and book stores on Hollywood Blvd.
This body of work is a Tinseltown kaleidoscope, a reflection with recognizable public artifacts that juxtapose celebrity scandals, politics and pop culture moments to paint a larger portrait of Donnelly’s appreciation and criticism of celebrity culture.
In“I Wanted To Be An Actor, but I Could Never Remember My Lines,” re-appropriated framed film stills, headshots, red carpet paparazzi photos and postcards are presented juxtapositions of an ode to the celebrities of present day and yesteryear. A large, film production-style wall collage entitled “Hollywood Babylon,” (a title used as an homage to Kenneth Anger’s books about scandal and death in Hollywood) found photos, tabloids, headshots, newspaper clippings, movie stills and other ephemera turn into narrative conceits that paint a picture of a tragic, drug addled, desperate, dark and humorous side of Hollywood culture that Donnelly attempted to navigate himself as a young transplant to Los Angeles trying to make it in entertainment. Donnelly stated: “I wanted to be an actor, but I could never remember my lines.”
The series uses repetition of images anchored by a singular image to contrast the work. A work entitled “A Fist Full of Dollars” showcases 4 images of Matthew McConaughey as the exotic male dancer character, “Dallas”, from the film“Magic Mike” and a singular postcard of Clint Eastwood’s character, “Joe” the man with no name, from Sergio Leone’s 1964 controversial spaghetti western “A Fistful of Dollars” in the center of the piece. The hyper masculine image of Eastwood as the American West cowboy smoking a cigar and wearing a cowboy hat, juxtaposed with the hyper masculine tanned Adonis physique of McConaughey as a leather clad cowboy, a style co-opted by the gay leather community from western cowboys, shows the similarities of their masculinity in film masked by homoeroticism and machismo.
The images in “A Fist Full of Dollars” were postcards sold in a memorabilia store that have since shut its doors. Unlike most ephemera sold in these stores, there’s nothing highly collectable about these images, they just get lost on a postcard rack with countless film still postcards purchased by tourists, but in a 29 x 21 inch frame Donnelly has created their new narrative.
Accompanying the show in the back of the gallery is a freestanding sculpture entitled “Hollywood Babylon.” The work is composed of dark undertones of Hollywood culture; newspaper clippings, photographs, headshots, and other ephemera positioned to replicate a bedroom wall one would find on a studio sound stage on a film set, with the images and clippings Donnelly has collected from 1993-2022.
Lastly, In the back of the gallery is a site-specific installation entitled “Wonderland” which is a collection of Hollywood studio produced DVD’s juxtaposed with their Porn parody titles and displayed on Slat wall to replicate an Adult Video store (which still use this display) and an Independent video store which are now long gone. Donnelly is showing his appreciation of this nostalgia for the days of wandering the aisles of Video Stores set on a 4 x 4 foot wall.
Brendan Donnelly, a Connecticut native (b. 1980) lives and works in Los Angeles. Over the course of his nearly two-decade career as an artist and designer, Donnelly has been in numerous exhibitions including solo shows in Los Angeles and Tokyo and group shows in New York, Los Angeles, Tokyo and Berlin. This is his first exhibition with Show Gallery.
Show Gallery is a contemporary art gallery and artist residency located in the heart of Hollywood which showcases both local and international contemporary artists.
Press inquiries: JC Gabel, jc@hatandbeard.com
Artist + artwork inquiries: Margot Ross, margot@show.gallery
