Writing about culture for Wired means having to write about anything related to Star Wars. But I like to freak that stream a bit and look for those who are perverting it to their own ends. Enter Sucklord, and his new exhibit You’re An Asshole For Buying This.
Sucklord’s Bootleg Sci-Fi Toys Freak Star Wars
What do you do when you’re an artist who can’t get manufacturers to produce your edgy work? Make crap and call it art, just like Sucklord does.
The scathing art prankster’s portfolio is stuffed with sloppy rip-off toys from sci-fi legend, most notably the Star Wars universe, none of which are licensed and all of which are uglier than a light-sabered Wampa.
“I realized that what I was able to produce myself was crappy and inferior by comparison to all that nice shit being made in Chinese and Japanese factories,” Sucklord — who prefers his invented persona to his original name — told Wired.com in an e-mail chat. “Instead of hiding and glossing over the suck factor, I decided to market it as a feature of the product.”
Don’t make the mistake of assuming Sucklord has designed any of the bootleg action figures in the gallery above as a commentary on juvenile toy consumption, or grown-ups still locked in their sci-fi diapers. He’s as much of a Star Wars thumb-sucker as the rest.
“My tagline — ‘You’re an asshole for buying this’ — isn’t an insult to the consumer, but a commiseration,” said Sucklord, whose first retrospective exhibition, Suckadelic, runs through Jan. 23 at New York’s Boo-Hooray Gallery. “I am just as much an asshole for liking and pursuing the pop-crap of the world as my customers.”
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