Well, That Took Balls...

June 18, 2008 4:27 PM

Nicolás Guagnini has produced an art book entitled 77 Testicular Imprints. You can see an example here. Not everyone is impressed (scroll to #4).

The paintings were produced with oil paint applied directly to the artist’s testicles and imprinted on various bound and ephemeral printed matter including: mainstream magazines such as Time and Life; art market staples such as Artforum, Art in America and Art News; exhibition and auction catalogues; rare magazines and artist’s books; personal letters; and lastly, on an assortment of original artworks, poems and studio notes by Vito Acconci, Simon Bedwell, Alejandro Cesarco and Dan Graham.

Like Marcel Broodthaers’ eagles, the testicular imprints also delineate a critical archive, acting like stamps of inclusion. What Guagnini establishes through this process are the relationships between Patriarchy, Private Property, Power, Progress, Position, Packaging and Personality in twentieth-century art production.

posted by rooftop secrets (49 comments total)

Not everyone is impressed

That's nuts!
posted by dersins at 4:31 PM on June 18, 2008

Basically a lot of the art world seems to be like internet trolls except internet trolls are much more often funny or thought-provoking.
posted by TheOnlyCoolTim at 4:33 PM on June 18, 2008 [7 favorites]

Packaging

Hee!
posted by padraigin at 4:33 PM on June 18, 2008

This reminds me of Charlie Brooker's "Mick Hucknall's Pink Pancakes", a fictional TV show that detailed the Simply Red singer pressing his sack against various windows.
posted by hnnrs at 4:34 PM on June 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

I love the pissy, dismissive Hirst review in the third link. And I even kind of like Hirst.
posted by mr_roboto at 4:42 PM on June 18, 2008

This is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their balls wedged against these periodicals, or why.
posted by onlyconnect at 4:48 PM on June 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

I wanna dip my balls in it.
posted by unmake at 4:48 PM on June 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

This might appeal to some in the rarified corners of the art world, or appeal to others in the same stratum as a platform for outrage. It's clearly an opportunity for the MeFi wags to excercise their chops. It's not, in my opinion, something that should have posted on MetaFilter (with respect, rooftop secrets).
posted by Turtles all the way down at 4:48 PM on June 18, 2008

"excercise," you know...
posted by Turtles all the way down at 4:50 PM on June 18, 2008

what's next? 77 pecker trails?
posted by pyramid termite at 4:58 PM on June 18, 2008

" the testicular imprints also delineate a critical archive, acting like stamps of inclusion." WTF does that mean?

it's paint, testicles and paper....

The word "art" does not mean what it used to..
posted by HuronBob at 5:09 PM on June 18, 2008

"77 Testicular Imprints is published in an edition of 500 copies, of which 16 are bound in cloth, signed and numbered, and include an original artist’s painting on the cover."

Do.not.touch.that.painting!
posted by HuronBob at 5:11 PM on June 18, 2008

If someone had done this 30 years ago, I think it'd be a better work. The fact is that both defacing valuable works/items has been done, as has the introduction of the body into the work, and the combination of the two - both in vulgar and non-vulgar ways - has been done. Not only that but it's been done with more apparent effort. This isn't so much shocking as it is kind of intellectually lazy and boring. His whole commentary on patriarchies, etc... doesn't seem to be making any new points or saying anything in any new ways.

meh, in other words.
posted by shmegegge at 5:14 PM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

Ballsy.
posted by mazola at 5:24 PM on June 18, 2008

I quite like them actually. I know it's been done before, but I just sort of like the look of them, of the slightly clinical prints overlain by the print of someone's balls. It's not brilliant, but it's not appalling by a long shot.

HuronBob: Art hasn't meant what it used to for a long, long time. The Fountain was just a urinal with a signature on it, but it's still a brilliant piece of art.
posted by emperor.seamus at 5:39 PM on June 18, 2008

"In the act of transforming [the imprinted items] into paintings, Guagnini suspends their original use value by altering their commodity of exchange through an act of artistic intervention."

GIMME A BREAK!
posted by subgear at 5:41 PM on June 18, 2008

I am currently pouring vodka on an open wound on my arm while singing that song at the end of "Portal." I'm wearing a union jack, and nailed to my forehead is a picture of a lolkitten morphed into a photo of the pope.

It's performance art. WHERE'S MY GOD DAMNED GRANT MONEY???!?
posted by jbickers at 5:45 PM on June 18, 2008

The paintings were produced with oil paint applied directly to the artist’s testicles

So... In addition to the paint and the printed matter that would serve as his canvas, the artist had surgical equipment with which to slice open his scrotum and stitch everything back in place after having hauled out his testicles?
posted by CKmtl at 5:48 PM on June 18, 2008

What Guagnini establishes through this process are the relationships between Patriarchy, Private Property, Power, Progress, Position, Packaging and Personality in twentieth-century art production.

Wow, that description is full of alliterative p-ness.
Is Guagnini trying to come across as an overcompensating conceptualist tool? If so, I think he's achieved nominal success. But this is coming from a guy who's favorite psychosexual neo-conceptual expressionist is Maude Lebowski. Her art has been commended as being strongly vaginal which bothers some men. The word itself makes some men uncomfortable. ... Vagina.
But honestly, art that is strongly scrotal is much worse. . .
Scrotal.
posted by isopraxis at 5:50 PM on June 18, 2008

This comment qwertyhas been altered by a keyboard testicular imprint.
              asdfg
               zxcv

(ouch)
posted by subgear at 5:52 PM on June 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

subgear - you only have the left-one?
posted by isopraxis at 5:55 PM on June 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

"What Guagnini establishes through this process are the relationships between Patriarchy, Private Property, Power, Progress, Position, Packaging and Personality in twentieth-century art production."

He's all over the place. He really needed a good editor to let him know that his Progress message was really subpar, and the Private Property material really belonged in a separate book, as it's at best tangential to the central Patriarchy material. Furthermore, the Power and Personality material is really just a rehash of a half-dozen post modern artists, it's really just pointlessly repetitive to leave that in.

So, really if it had been a work exploring Patriarchy, Position, Packaging and his balls, that would have been worthwhile.
posted by oddman at 5:55 PM on June 18, 2008

Bollocks.
posted by krinklyfig at 5:59 PM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

isopraxis - this one's for you!
uiop[
jkl;
m,.
posted by subgear at 6:01 PM on June 18, 2008

Just think what Rindy Sam could do with this exhibit!
posted by TedW at 6:09 PM on June 18, 2008

Ceci n'est pas une tea-bag.
posted by kuujjuarapik at 6:17 PM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

bollocks.
posted by Frasermoo at 6:26 PM on June 18, 2008

Did you know that 72% of the it-admins create their strong passwords with keyboard testicular imprint method combined with rhytmical tapping of shift-key? So next time you go to ask them to reset your password, that's a humpin'.
posted by Free word order! at 6:27 PM on June 18, 2008

1. Get something shocking
2. Juxtapose with something banal
3. Profit!
posted by mattholomew at 6:29 PM on June 18, 2008 [1 favorite]

paint + tea-bagging + historical documents = art ?

what?
posted by Gular at 7:01 PM on June 18, 2008

ῳ

posted by ryanrs at 7:05 PM on June 18, 2008

Bullshit. I guess the guy gets points if he can get people to pay for this shit. They're idiots.

I typed that with my balls.
posted by marxchivist at 7:10 PM on June 18, 2008

My friend's roommate did this in a much more, shall we say, "low art" fashion.
posted by lovetragedy at 7:21 PM on June 18, 2008

Bigfoot leaves testicular impressions in the mud, except when the textures were actually made by an elk.
posted by Tube at 7:26 PM on June 18, 2008

Somebody sic Mr.T on this guy.
posted by GuyZero at 7:39 PM on June 18, 2008

Not to be outdone by Miguel Calderón's Greetings from My Hairy Nuts.
posted by josephtate at 8:52 PM on June 18, 2008 [2 favorites]

jason's_planet has produced an art book entitled Imprints of My Sweaty Ass Crack.

You can see an example here.

jason's_planet intends to make a lot of money from this project and retire early.
posted by jason's_planet at 8:58 PM on June 18, 2008

josephtate: That is an exquisite piece. I thank you.
posted by Turtles all the way down at 9:09 PM on June 18, 2008

The artist's meta-commentary on commodified praxis expresses a post-colonial psychosexual fetishization of the embodied self with his balls.
posted by flotson at 9:39 PM on June 18, 2008

Scrotum? Damn near hung his work in a gallery'ed 'im!
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:42 AM on June 19, 2008

...and then killed 'im, so the posthumous price of his work would skyrocket.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 1:58 AM on June 19, 2008

Strange. They all look like the map of Iraq that the FBI showed me a while back.
posted by Spatch at 6:07 AM on June 19, 2008 [1 favorite]

This is junk. Whoever accepted it for publication should be sacked.
posted by newmoistness at 6:55 AM on June 19, 2008

One more reason why art School Confidential failed; it's nearly impossible to satirize bad art, as there's always worse artists IRL.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:17 AM on June 19, 2008

He's just "hanging brain."
posted by porn in the woods at 8:33 AM on June 19, 2008

I've been caught doing this to covers of The National Review, but then I have no choice but to do it in public because I won't pay for a copy.
posted by troybob at 9:34 AM on June 19, 2008

I love work like this that is only further legitimized by people rejecting it.
posted by cmoj at 11:25 AM on June 19, 2008

The following is typed using the full length and girth of my penis:

g
b

Oh :-(
posted by turgid dahlia at 5:50 PM on June 24, 2008

I HAVE DONE AN ART
posted by tomble at 2:20 AM on June 27, 2008