Heavy Handed: Art Fist, Your Mom

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By Katherine Sweetman

THE ART FIST COLLECTIVE — a curatorial team that’s breaking the rules and making shit happen…

YOUR MOM is up now through May 25th. Closing reception on Friday, May 25th, 6-10pm at Zepf Alt.
The Art Fist Collective (Jim Garry, Leanne Garry and Enrique Limón) have put together their 5th, kick-ass exhibition. The meticulously curated show, titled YOUR MOM features mother-themed works that range from traditional-style portraits to giant spray paint cans to videos to performances and everything in between. Come see Zepf Alt transformed into a work of maternal curatorial art.

I got to ask one of the members, Enrique Limón,  a little about the show and a little about the collective. Included here are image from the opening of YOUR MOM.

Interview with Enrique Limón E.L interviewer K.S.

K.S.      Enrique, tell me about Art Fist Collective. What’s the real mission behind this collective?

E. L.       Art Fist is a curatorial experiment with three people at its core whose mission, as stated in our website, is to give the local art scene a much needed enema.
We certainly didn’t invent the scene, but we are staunch supporters of it.

K.S.      You have a show that’s up now at Zepf Alt, that went up the Friday before Mother’s Day, a show Friday, titled, “Your Mom.”  How did this idea come about, and what are some highlights of the show?

E. L.       It was my fellow Collective member Leanne Garry’s idea. It started with the name and the general concept, and soon evolved to a group show almost forty strong. The idea behind our exhibits is to allow up-and-commers to show alongside established local legends—like say master muralists Mario Torero or Victor Ochoa, and also to give attendees a different, memorable experience that hopefully encourages them to start their own personal art collection.

K.S.      You have had 5, so far that were curated by Art Fist Collective, right? Which was your favorite?

E. L.       It’s going to sound so cliché, but being that we’ve never half-assed a show, they all have a special place in the pedestal. We started with “B-Side” which featured visual art by musical tastemakers; had a great coup with our B.Y.O.A. (Bring Your Own Art) show, broke new ground with our all Latino/all Virgin of Guadalupe show, and of course, our Pony show that helped the Save Our Heritage Organisation’s efforts to save downtown’s historic Caliente racetrack mural.

K.S.      Alright, tell me about the name, “Art Fist Collective”, it’s revolutionary in tone, but you have a few slogans that reference or allude to fisting (“…a sexual activity that involves inserting a hand into the rectum” — as Wikipedia informs me). Please explain, does the art world or San Diego art world in particular need this rectal awakening? And why do we need it?

E. L.       Leave it to Wikipedia to get my juices flowing! The name, along with our slogans have a clear tongue-in-cheek connotation, but to the best of my knowledge no actual fisting has ever occurred in any of our shows. Heavy petting sure, just no fisting.

Historically, the clenched fist image is also a sign of protest, and in us forming Art Fist, we were protesting an array of boring, stale shows that were taking over and becoming the norm in our oh so conservative town. San Diego has a great edge to it, and a strong emerging art scene that not everybody is aware of.

One thing you’ll never see in one of our shows is a generic Shamu watercolor; unless, of course, someone wants to get fisted atop of it, then we can kill two birds with one stone by calling it performance art and finally living up to our namesake.

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* I (Katherine Sweetman) should mention that I am in this group show. But I won’t mention it until the end of the interview with a little asterisk.
If you want to see the video I put in the show, with plastic rats dancing to Danzig’s “Mother”, you can see it here.