Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project Bruce LaBruce

Javier Peres is very pleased to present Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project, a solo exhibition by Bruce LaBruce. LaBruce's most recent film project, "Otto; Or, Up With Dead People," which premiered at the Sundance and Berlin film festivals, and went on to be shown at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) and other prominent venues around the world, introduced the public to a new genre in the already-expansive vocabulary of LaBruce: horror. Since the late 1980s, LaBruce has worked in a variety of media, including artist publications, photography, film and cinematography. With his latest project, "Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project," which will include a new performance at the opening reception, LaBruce has marked a path to uncharted territory. In his own words:

 

"Zombies and porn. What a beautiful combination. I have been dealing in both genres since the early nineties when I made No Skin Off My Ass, my first sexually explicit feature film, and co-starred in my friend Candy's short film Interview with a Zombie, in which I played a gay member of the undead. Against all professional advice, I've been making porn movies ever since, albeit reluctantly. (I'm not a particularly avid consumer of porn, and I don't follow the industry; not unpretentiously, I consider myself not so much a pornographer as an artist who works in porn.) After making three sexually explicit feature films (NSOMA, Super 8 1/2, and Hustler White), in 1999 I wrote and directed my first "legitimate" porno film, Skin Flick, made under the auspices of the German porn company Cazzo Films. The subject was neo-Nazi skinheads, characters that, one could argue, have a certain zombie-like quality. The hardcore version, released under the title Skin Gang, was a full-on pornographic product, shot in a relatively conventional porn style, and packaged and promoted with an adult entertainment industry audience in mind. (It was even nominated for nine gay adult video awards in the U.S.) My following film, The Raspberry Reich (2004), about a gang of extreme left wing would-be terrorists – another zombie-esque bunch – was also conceived as a porn product, although the softcore version, which nonetheless contained sexually explicit material, managed to play at over 150 film festivals worldwide. (The hardcore version, entitled The Revolution Is My Boyfriend, was released by the porn company Wurst Films.) In 2008 I finally stopped pussyfooting around the living dead theme and made an actual zombie flick, called Otto; or, Up with Dead People. Another of my sexually explicit art films, Otto also played at more than 150 film fests despite, or perhaps because of, the infamous gut-fucking scene, in which a gay zombie penetrates a hole in the stomach of a fellow gay zombie with his undead cock. While touring the world with the film I found myself in interviews making the lofty pronouncement that I believe zombie porn is the wave of the future, and that we will soon routinely see porous, corrupted flesh being penetrated by legions of lascivious zombies. (Zombie porn is practical: you can create your own orifice!) So by way of a self-fulfilling prophecy, and to get the ball rolling (or, I suppose, balls), I have pulled together the funding for an Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project, to be shot in LA in August, and starring one of the biggest names in the adult entertainment industry. The title of the film and the identity of the featured star will be announced at the opening of my Peres Projects show on May 23rd. I will be sneak previewing screen tests of some of the special effects that will be used in this splatter zombie movie, created by LA-based FX whiz Joe Castro. I will also be showing a variety of zombie material that I have already made, including hardcore sex out-takes from Otto, and images from a wild Catalonian separatist zombie orgy photo shoot taken at the opening of my show at the Antigua Casa Haiku Gallery in Barcelona last autumn, as well as a recent photo shoot/installation featuring revolutionary IRA zombies at the performance event Visions of Excess that just happened in London this April. I will also be showing my debut as a zombie in Candy Pauker's Interview with a Zombie. So get ready for a revolutionary zombie porn extravaganza!"

 

 Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project will be on view at Peres Projects, Los Angeles (2766 S. La Cienega Blvd., CA 90034) through June 27, 2009. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M and by appointment.

Bruce LaBruce lives and works in Toronto, Canada.