The first rule about Club Austin is...you DO NOT talk about Club Austin.

Or so goes the title of one of Western senior Austin Stiegemeier’s paintings and the namesake for his upcoming solo art exhibit, Club Austin.

Colleen Barry and Allie Paul, the curators for the student-run Viking Union Gallery, said a week ago the gallery had been reserved for the widely acclaimed and wildly controversial artist Keith Boadwee, who had gained notoriety with his series of enema paintings. But at the last minute the gallery was forced to cancel Boadwee’s exhibit—more for logistical reasons than the contentious nature of his work—and Barry and Paul were left with an empty space and no artist to fill it.

In the rush for a replacement, they remembered Stiegemeier’s work from a previous group showing and considered asking him to show instead. An hour after the cancellation, Barry returned home to find a completely unaware Stiegemeier sitting with Barry's roommate in their living room—and the gallery had its artist.

It is highly unusual for a student to be asked do a solo showing at the gallery—it happens at most once every other year. but the last-minute cancellation and the lucky encounter left Stiegemeier alone to fill an empty gallery and a massive pair of shoes, Barry said.

A hat covered with rhinestone elephants barely contains Stiegemeier’s long hair as he kneels to explain his painting “The first rule about Club Austin is... You DO NOT talk about Club Austin.” It depicts a scene from the movie Fight Club where Edward Norton and Brad Pitt splice porn into kiddy films. But instead of Norton and Pitt, the painting contains three images of Stiegemeier in their place.

By taking icons from pop culture—usually still frames from movies and TV shows—and inserting himself into the scenes, Stiegemeier said he creates a powerful juxtaposition of the deeply personal and the diluted mainstream. To generate even more of a contrast, Stiegemeier uses a combination of the depth of painting and the flat, brazenness of print. The result is an intense feeling of culture shock that is easily accessible by anyone exposed to pop culture. Examples of his work include a painting of a Seinfield scene overlaid with a pink Cadillac and a print of a crackhead sucking oxygen with Stiegemeier peeing in the background, he said.  

“I think that if you like Saving Private Ryan or you like Fight Club or American Beauty, you’re going to see something of yourself in his paintings,” Barry said. “There’s so much familiar imagery in them, I think that people can really put themselves inside of it—like Austin did, literally inside the movie.”

Stiegemeier has yet to move his work into the gallery, but he is already planning an opening that lives up to the exhibit’s name—Club Austin. With ropes and a red carpet, a DJ and dancing and a whole spread of free food, Stiegemeier, Barry and Paul are hoping to create a club-like experience that actively draws the viewer into his work. Stiegemeier said he has not decided whether he will try to sell any of his works at the exhibit, but whatever happens he said he is completely satisfied with the chance to do a solo showing in the gallery.

“If people look at my work and they enjoy it and get something out of it, I don’t think all of my work has to sell for it to be a successful show—or any of it, really,” Austin said. “I just want people to have a good time while they’re there.”

 

Who is Keith Boadwee?

Keith Boadwee’s work is shocking. Keith Boadwee’s work is beautiful. Either way, VU Gallery curator Colleen Barry said, Keith Boadwee’s work is something every art-lover should see.
Boadwee gained fame in the 1990s working in a genre called identity politics, specifically with a series of enema paintings. Since then, Barry said, he has been pushing the way people think about male nudity and performance art with works incorporating every part of the body.

Boadwee, who now teaches at the San Francisco Art Institute and at the California College of the Arts, has been widely acclaimed for his controversial and progressive style.
“If you look up an anthology of body art from the 90s, he’s in it,” Barry said.

Barry said the exhibit was turned down more for financial and scheduling reasons than reputational ones. While there were complications after the gallery made the proposal to the Board of Directors, and while Barry felt these complications would have become more significant had the process continued, the gallery decided to pull the show itself before the Board had made a decision.

“In the end it really just turned out to be ‘can the artist come at that time for this amount of money,’” she said. “And the answer was no.”

But the gallery still feels strongly that Boadwee is someone they want to bring to the Western community, and they are currently collaborating with the art department to bring him to campus for a lecture. Look for it sometime late this quarter or early winter quarter, Barry said.

“He’s really shocking at first,” she said, “but then once you get past that initial reaction, you’re like 'wow, that is actually really beautiful, even though it’s a penis.' You have to have a sense of humor to like his work.”

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