JOHN WATERS: THE WORST OF WATERS
Works Never Before Exhibited in San Francisco
The Rudest, The Hardest to Sell, The Just Plain Wrong
Rena Bransten, San Francisco
September 21 – November 16, 2024
Sexual Attraction, 2014
C-prints, 12 1/2 x 33 1/2 inches (total)
6 x 27 inches (image size), edition of 5
Rena Bransten Gallery presents The Worst of Waters, the fifth solo exhibition with JOHN WATERS, who the gallery represented in San Francisco since 2002.
A hit parade of hell, Waters’ photographic prints and sculptures use appropriated movie imagery that both mocks and embraces the extremes of the art world and show business all in one whoop of demented joy. Failed masculinity, anal trauma, Catholic rebellion, critical revenge, capital punishment, even children acting out a Grated video version of the X-rated film “Pink Flamingos”. It’s all here, on the walls, on the floor like leftover storyboards and damaged movie props abandoned by a B-list publicist who fled the industry. Waters considers this a group exhibition with only one artist: himself.
John Waters’ artwork has been shown in galleries and museums all over the world, starting with Colin de Land’s American Fine Arts, Co. in 1992. He’s had solo museum exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Kunsthaus Zurich, Switzerland; The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh, PA; Fotomuseum Winterthur, Switzerland; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, among others. In 2011, John Waters was selected as a juror for the Venice Biennale.
Five books have been published on John Waters’ photographs and sculptures: Director’s Cut, 1997 (Scalo Books); John Waters: Change of Life, 2004 (Harry N. Abram); Unwatchable, 2006 (Marianne Boesky Gallery and de Pury & Luxembourg); John Waters – How Much Can You Take?, 2015 (Scheidegger & Spiess); and Indecent Exposure, 2018 (University of California Press).
John Waters’ artwork is in the permanent collection of several museums including the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY; Museum of Modern Art, NY; New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, Whitney Museum of American Art, NY.
RENA BRANSTEN GALLERY
1275 Minnesota Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
