Next week is the last week of John Waters’ “Bad Directors Chair” at Sprüth Magers in Berlin. Maybe you aren’t aware that pop culture icon, writer and director John Waters is also a celebrated artist that shows at some of the best international galleries? Waters is at his vibrant best when flaunting Hollywood’s rules or reveling in bad taste. The director of Pink Flamingos (1972) brings the same wit and audacity to the art gallery. Perched upon his “Bad Director’s Chair”, Waters has cast his eye over some unlikely corners of the film business, transforming his observations of all the glamour and heartbreak of Hollywood into photographic essays and narrative sculptures that are both ridiculously honest and brutally humorous. Waters becomes the self-appointed press agent for his newly conceived “little movies” who would surely be fired the first day of a shoot by the furious producers. Waters brings a darker mood to his sculptures. In “Playdate” (2006) Michael Jackson, all dressed up in pink pyjamas, lifts his hand up to a tiny but fully bearded Charles Manson. “Two famous media villains. Charles Manson and Michael Jackson, reborn as perfect babies – could they have saved each other if they had met on a playdate before their lives went wrong?”, says Waters about his work. In “Bad Director’s Chair” (2006), a typical canvas chair demanded by Hollywood auteurs is labeled with words that seem to reflect the deepest doubts of any filmmaker. “Unprepared”, “Hack”, “No Shot List”, among other disasters, all appear printed on the wood or canvas, as if the chair itself was the embodiment of an on-set nightmare. Also part of the exhibition, three of the artist’s earliest films, Hag in a Black Leather Jacket (1964), Roman Candles(1966) and Eat Your Makeup (1968), will play in loops in specially designed ‘peep’ rooms. (All images John Waters via Sprüth Magers and Marian Boesky)
