Bunny Rogers be aware of the “Saviano effect”

We must confess that after looking up the website embroidered on one of the blankets Bunny Rogers is presenting at Karl Kostyál’s current group show (Warez) – earlier part of an installation titled “If I die young” and referring to certain serious problems of childhood – we thought that the 24-year-old artist from Huston, Texas, has committed a mistake in the choice of her subject, and it would better to not report about her. Even if, as the artist points out, this series of blankets which bear the watermarks used by certain dodgy child modelling agencies on their on-line images were not for sale.

We call it the “Roberto Saviano effect”: for who is the criminal that wouldn’t like to be pictured as the celebrated Italian writer describes his terrible characters? How many problematic adolescents has “Gomorrah” – both the novel and the movie – inspired? When reading Saviano’s well informed, and lyrical, denounce of the Italian criminal organisations, we have to keep in mind that Roberto Saviano does not represent a socially concerned non-profit agency, but is a well-remunerated author who works on a commercial level. The risk, when talking about this kind of topics through art is to end up promoting what, on the contrary, we would like to denounce. Even the Marquis De Sade, to whom the Musée d’Orsay is dedicating a very clever exhibition, was aware of certain social taboos that all forms of creative expression, written or visual, react and respond to with likely reaction from the public.

Nevertheless, Bunny Rogers has a clear expressive talent, especially in the realm of communication, and the courage she reveals by facing so directly problematic subjects like sex, death and related youth issues, is definitely remarkable.

If Bunny Rogers herself is the subject of the human struggles she often refers to in her performances, writings, and object-based artworks it is never clearly affirmed, but sets an interesting parallel with Nan Goldin – rather than with the caustic and self-contained Sophie Calle. Goldin’s photography is indeed so effective because the audience is aware that she is part of the stories she is telling about, hence her photography is so credible. Similarly, Bunny Rogers’ artworks appear to be as credible thanks to poetry, such an intimate and warm form of expression as her Cunny Poem Vol. I reminds us.

To spot the cardinal points which influence her spleen and self-revealing viewpoints (no subject is too dark to ignore or censor) is not that complicated, and her confessed fascination for minor key songs writer, the late Elliott Smith (see her last show at Société, in Berlin), is the smoking gun. Life is never easy if you are a sensitive person, especially if you are an extremely proud one. But the imagery in Bunny Rogers’ work is broad and charmingly, and purposely, adolescent at times: references to cartoons are a critical connection to youthfulness, a link that she has been able to turn into a successful poetic device thanks to her strong instinct for photography and text based information.

A selection of Bunny Rogers’ video works is going to be presented next December in Warsaw, at the Museum of Modern Art, and in January 2015 she will present her second book of poems, “My Apologies Accepted”, at the KGB Bar in New York City (please check their calendar for the date).

December 3, 2014