Mark Kostabi debuted in the 1980s as a figurative painter and pioneer of factory-style art production. In Kostabi World studios, he established a bureaucratic protocol of committees to conceive, review, name, and delegate artwork execution to studio assistants. Kostabi's signature was the only authenticating trace of his own hand in his paintings. His works and attitudes conveyed ambivalent satire of the era's corporate culture and complacent vanity in a distinctive style of kitsch surrealism, appropriating both classical references and humdrum cosmopolitan themes. Kostabi developed a burlesque media persona, seeking constant controversy and press. His interest in media steered the major step of his career when he started to broadcast a show on Manhattan's public access TV channel in the early 1990s, which became a motor to abundant video journaling practice. Kostabi's practice anticipated the rise of reality television and prefigured the emergence of widespread peer-to-peer display of private life on the internet. Due to its distinctive features, Kostabi's practice left behind a large and growing archive, which is presented here as both a point of historical interest and a compelling living document.

Art curation and installation design by Paul Gondry, Paul Lemaire and Rafael Foster.

Year: 2017