Press release

A Safari for “American Trophies”

The Gallery on Greene's Rita MacNelly and Beezy Bogan single out the slowest members of the unsuspecting human herd in places like Key West, New Orleans and New York City, snap pictures and return to their studio in Richmond, VA. to create their trophies.
A woman walks down a Key West street while, unbeknownst to her, two artist on bikes circle, closing in on their prey. They come at her from two directions, begin secretly firing at her from their cameras until she trips and falls.
That predatory pair, MacNelly and Bogan, later felt pretty bad about her spill but that’s the nature of their hunt.
“The quick ones get away, but the slower ones are the ones we’re after,” says Bogan.
And so you have the absurd safari of “American Trophies,” a collection of human specimens coming to Key West Feb. 1, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m., at the Custom House Museum. Previous Bogan/MacNelly shows have featured a transvestite rooster, giant shoes, and frogs. Now they’ve dedicated themselves to human prey, like young Barry and his pet identical twin hamster; like Polly, original roller derby girl revisiting her skates and short shorts; like Eugene who perpetually lounges in a bathrobe, perpetually invites you into his hot tub. There are also two sculptures caught mid-guffaw, a bit of mortal hilarity that departs drastically from the “What was that noise?” expressions of the others and confirms MacNelly and Bogan’s mastery of moods.
The sculptures may end up looking very little like the original prey, but MacNelly and Bogan lets the sculpture dictate — the face may retain its strange humanity, but the creative taxidermy that occurs from wire frame to plaster to skin, hair, and clothing (bathrobe? Dirty Converse hi-tops? Hawaiian shirt?) occurs when the sculpture becomes what it wants to be.
“If you don’t have the look then you’ve got a boring, flat portrait,” says Bogan. It can no longer be about the photograph – it has to be about the sculpture.”
A particularly fine hunting stand is right at the bar at Billy’s there in Key West, where the duo sips tequila sunrises and watches the tourists come off the mountain-sized cruise liners. It gives the pair a chance to catch some exotics in their sights.
But the collection of “American Trophies” are mostly domestic species, many collected on the island of Key West – Eugene with his bathrobe was spied from MacNelly’s upstairs bathroom while he was getting ready for a dip in the hot tub at a neighboring house.
Is their hunting party an elaborate excuse for voyeurism? Probably. But anyone who goes on their safari is also guilty of poaching something very strange from American culture.
We are collaborating artists who have merged sculpture and painting for twenty years, the two artists say. Our art begins on the streets where our antenna is always out scanning our environment for new ideas. Cameras allow us space to observe and collect images unobserved. Our job is to find the face that will give our sculptures life.
In their studio in Richmond, Virginia, they transform one reality into another. Sculptures are created from wire, plaster, winterstone, cloth and paint.
Bogan creates everything you can’t change about yourself, your basic form, while MacNelly creates everything you can change, hair, clothing etc and with paint gives the sculpture its final shaping.
Our goal is not to strictly record but give the viewer an over all sensory experience, they say. Short stories closer to fact than fiction.

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