The tiny hallway of Pendu Gallery can hardly contain Nick Zedd. Not just in a physical way either — even though his paintings and drawings fill every bare scrap of wall space and his films loop on an old TV screen elevated inches away from the ceiling. Nick Zedd is bursting out in myriad metaphorical directions as well. It becomes evident very quickly that these walls tell only a fraction of the whole, filthy truth. Zedd rose to underground infamy three decades ago when he fathered the Cinema of Transgression, and made a veritable career of displaying, mocking and hacking-up boundaries of taste. The exhibition at Pendu features sensations and sights such as: the buxom bodies and heavily done-up faces of no wave legends Lydia Lunch and Tessa Hughes Freeland; unframed They Eat Scum and Geek Maggot Bingo posters; Tom Thumb being swallowed into a giant vagina; the scratchy feel of super-8 film; and pen and ink covers of the Bulletin bound together with three-hole punches. Here is the work of a true original — one who helped to revolutionize the very term “underground.”
This show is an overall statement on the far-reaching power of Zedd’s subversive career. Not only did he empower a group of otherwise unknown filmmakers to create work in which everything was permitted and no part of the human psyche ignored, but he introduced the mainstream to the delicacies and power of the word “transgression.” Perhaps now, in this climate of fear, depression and want, we need Nick Zedd’s violent eroticism and black humor more than ever. Works will remain on view at Pendu Gallery until November 26, 2010. Clip from Zedd’s “Thrust in Me” after the jump. — Colleen Barry
