"This isn´t art" is one comment one´s bound to hear at an exhibition that, quite in an exhibitionist´s fashion, makes blatant displays of blasphemy & mutilation. Patrons used to painted bouquets or flowers in a basket or serene rustic landscapes are likely not just to declare it but exclaim it: THIS ISN´T ART. But neither is this Duchamp exhibiting a urinal, nor is this Allan Kaprow brushing his teeth, deliberately making "art which can´t be art" in furtherance of his lifelong blurring-of-art-&-life project. Sadly, the conclusion "this isn´t art" will probably spring from offense, from polite sensibilities that have been offended-sensibilities that maybe are worth offending anyway.

But in fact, if there is anything offensive about Vincent Balandra´s * Catharsis*, it isn´t the spectacle of morbid exotica such as the myriad physical deformities that take centerstage (whether apparently self-inflicted or congenital) or the blood that shoots out of gray masturbatory sequences. It´s the fact that he´s seizing art away from your hands, away from the popular democratic tendency-shall we say `the postmodern tendency´?-to make art out of anything at all. Baudrillard: "This is where true democracy lay: not in the accession of everyone to aesthetic enjoyment, but in the transaesthetic advent of a world in which every object would, without distinction, have its fifteen minutes of fame." While Baudrillard talks about the absence of distinction, *Catharsis *itself plays up this notion of distinction: Clearly, what you see is art-or at least is posited as such-& not life. Behold the artist as fascist. As Rauschenberg once declared, in self-reference to a telegram he had sent, "This is a portrait of Iris Clert if I say so."   Continued...