Deep, Fake

Staged begins with the end of Kurt Cobain (specifically the 1991 album Nevermind), and starts with a drained, looping reality this “popular" and “rebellious” figure of the anti-rockstar leaves behind. Or sets into motion. “All of our” actions flattened along the warp-speed disappearing act of any possible dissent: << “Comes the revolution, Comrade, everyone gets to eat roast beef every day.” “But comrade, I don’t like roast beef.” “Comes the revolution, Comrade, you’ll like roast beef.” >>* (The revolution is televised. That’s why it never actually happens. At least we get to watch it, maybe even enjoy it….) Remember: nobody ever said it’s the revolution we wanted, it’s the one of our dreams¡ The whole world is watching (sleepily, right before bedtime)—and that’s the problem. But this problem has potential! We just need to get a good look at it, over there. After all, a surface is deeper on the outside (but farther on the inside).

Meanwhile, this is the first exhibition at the gallery where we have actually (physically) produced the work in the space of the gallery itself—the gallery appears as itself in the context of this work—as itself, but also as someone else, somewhere else: right here… for now…. (Like learning my mother-tongue again, for the first time: remembering how I forget what you remember.) With this staged perspective initially set-up as a way of paying-attention to how “the market”—and at this point, politics— automatively absorbs opposition, converting it into consumable form, “the exhibition,” as well as the gallery itself, are positioned as activities that are obviously always in reach of commodification (if not already in circulation). “The artist’s” acts of refusal and gestures of transgression are continually folded back into the very systems they oppose: any performance is already [recorded,] reenacted. Otherwise, they won’t make money. They just won’t cut it. After all, anything cutting-edge still needs to be brought to the center of attention, bought and sold, transacted-on… or else! Or else what? Or, else. (What is-is this, a ‘knock-knock’ joke?)

Knock, knock.

— Who’s there?

Nevermind.

— Nevermind who?

Exactly.

So, can any act of subversion or resistance ‘become famous’ without being totally consumed by the commercialism and capitalism acted against? Can any punk become popular without selling-out? Can any artist become “established” without becoming someone else, somewhere else? (Or is that exactly the point?)    

 Is an avant-garde possible anymore—was it ever? 

Or is this all just a macabre charade? Nevermind.

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* Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, “Paranoid Reading and Reparative Reading, or, You’re So Paranoid, You Probably Think This Essay Is About You,” in Touching Feeling: Affect, Pedagogy, Performativity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2003), 123–151.

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Work by Matthew McGaughey has been included in recent group exhibitions and performances such as Haunting House (Departure Lounge, Los Angeles, 2024), Erotic Codex (Honor Fraser Gallery, Los Angeles, 2024), Collapse All Windows and Exit (1258 W. 2nd St., Los Angeles, 2024), Untitled Affairs (Miller ICA, Pittsburgh, 2022), In the Company of Men (Platform Gallery, Pittsburgh, 2020), 18-Wheeler Platform Shoes (Melwood Gallery, Pittsburgh, 2019), and Gloria! (Melwood Gallery, Pittsburgh, 2019).

Matthew’s commercial work as a composer includes Criminal Confessions (Oxygen, 2016–2019), American Horror Story (FX, 2014), The Last Ship (TNT, 2014–2015), Cold Case Files (Oxygen, 2014–2019), Project Runway (Bravo, 2004–2019), Top Chef (Bravo, 2004–2019), and The Real Housewives franchise (Bravo, 2004–2020).

Since 2020, Matthew has been awarded the William S. Dietrich II Presidential Fellowship (2021), ASCAP Screen Music Awards (2021–2023), a Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in Painting & Sculpture nomination (2021), a GuSH Research Grant from Carnegie Mellon University (2021), the Frank-Ratchye Fund for Art at the Frontier (2021). Matthew received a MFA from Carnegie Mellon University, and a PhD in Composition with a focus on extended performance practice and music technology from the University of York in 2004.

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CREDITS

Kurt performed by Matthew McGaughey

Gimp 1 performed by Matt Savitsky 

Gimp 2 performed by Nathaniel Whitfield

Director - Matthew McGaughey

Director of Photography - Kev Robertson

Editor - Matthew McGaughey

Music and Sound - Matthew McGaughey

Assistant Camera - Matt Krueger

Foley - Matthew Salib 

Makeup - Lancel Reyes

Costume Design - Brittany Matyas

Miniatures - Blake David Palmer 

Props/Stage Design - Matthew McGaughey

Special Assistance - Nathaniel Whitfield, Patrick Vogel

Special thanks to Paulette Harman, Jamison Edgar, Reisig and Taylor Contemporary, Raya McGaughey, Therese Markow, Departure Lounge LA, Sin Fronteras, Audrey Medrano, Angela Wasko, Linda Franke, Tanya Brodsky, Alex Stevens, Lancel Reyes, Ryan Ross.

Dedicated to Robert McGaughey