A Kick in the Head: Uncouth Stories of Sunken Beauty focuses on a disparate group of artists that utilize various photo-based techniques to archive lives lived on the edge, finding dark beauty in unseen and often misunderstood aspects of humanity. Their stories are told through bodies of work that focus on subcultures or obsessions that can only be properly conveyed when a viewer is able to experience a multiplicity of images. These are artists that utilize the photographic medium to express their dissatisfaction, their otherness as obsessives and outsiders, or a fixation on the odd and obscene. The images are evidence of activities, documentation, categorization, and obsession. Invention and reinvention share the stage. Genesis P-Orridge explains the motivation for h/er practice and life: “I’ve been involved in a total war with culture since the day I started…I am at war with the status quo of society, and I am at war with those in control and power. I’m at war with hypocrisy and lies.”

For many of these artists, the publication of their images in book form is a critical aspect of their practice. This allows them to create a narrative through the curation and sequencing of images, as well as ensuring that their story reaches a much wider audience and is preserved as a specific document. Many of these publications are included in the exhibition, and Alternate Project’s concurrent, pop-up bookstore offers a wide variety of rare publications and editions.

Curated by Michael Lowe and George Kurz.

Presented in conjunction with Alternate Projects, Covington

Featured Artists: Vito Acconci, Nobuyoshi Araki, Morton Bartlett, Richard Billingham, Guglielmo Achille Cavellini, Larry Clark, Bob Flanagan, Katy Grannan, Mike Kelley, Richard Kern, Robert Mapplethorpe, Ryan McGinley, Annette Messager, Pierre Molinier, Otto Muehl, Catherine Opie, Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, Rob Pruitt, Arnulf Rainer, Lucas Samaras, Penny Slinger, Bob Wade, Count Zichy