{"id":958131,"date":"2026-07-25T10:27:26","date_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:27:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/958131\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T10:27:26","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T10:27:26","slug":"hit-me-baby-one-more-time","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/958131\/","title":{"rendered":"Hit me, baby, one more time"},"content":{"rendered":"

When looking at Los Angeles artist Richard Hawkins\u2019s two collages, I couldn\u2019t decide whether the young man in the middle of one of the works, haloed by streams of fake blood and cut-outs of young male heartthrobs, was Richard Ramirez the Night Stalker, or simply a Ramirez look-alike. As I was looking, curator Ryan M. Pfeiffer shared that Hawkins considers himself an \u201cunarchiver.\u201d The term, as I understand it, references the archive\u2019s ability to capture potential, to fix the subject in place. However, when those unyielding contours are met by desire\u2019s unruly lines\u2014the type of longing that scrambles whether I want to be you, kill you, or fuck you\u2014like the blood and guts of Hawkins\u2019s maybe-killers, something escapes, something of ourselves cannot be contained.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This idea of rupture, spiritual penetration, the third eye opening to heaven and hell, functions as an apt descriptor of \u201cOrgangrinder,\u201d Pfeiffer\u2019s show now up at M. LeBlanc. For \u201cOrgangrinder\u201d is an exhibition of transgressive art built upon the truth that the shared vocabulary of ecstasy, the furthest distance the self can tread, is articulated within the body and its expenditures: the grammar of blood, piss, vomit, shit, and cum.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Featuring work by Robert Mapplethorpe, Fakir Musafar<\/a>, Breyer P-Orridge, Richard Hawkins, Hermann Nitsch, Pierre Molinier, Paul McCarthy, and Ron Athey, the show contains a mix of prints, collages (including the two Hawkins works mentioned above), moving image pieces, and sculpture. Much of the Mapplethorpe work (several silver gelatin prints of couples engaging in sadomasochistic sex)\u2014alongside prints of McCarthy\u2019s performance of Death Ship (1981), in which the artist played a fascistic sea captain\u2014is being shown to audiences for the first time thanks to a combined effort on the part of Pfeiffer, M. LeBlanc, Mapplethorpe\u2019s foundation, and the Kinsey Institute.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I was particularly taken by P-Orridge\u2019s sculptural fetish object-cum-totem The Poisonous Trap of Biology, Frozen Replication (2005), which resembles a gumball machine filled with tampons crowned by a coyote\u2019s taxidermied head. Though the piece is meant to indict society\u2019s limiting notions of biology and gender roles (a worthy endeavor), my eye was specifically drawn to a smudge of dried blood on one of the tampons. I asked Pfeiffer if he knew whose blood it was, and he told me it was his own contribution. It is an elegant gesture, for not only is blood listed as one of the piece\u2019s materials, seemingly missing before Pfeiffer added his, but the offering also shares something of Genesis P-Orridge\u2019s own desire to merge completely into one being\u2014Breyer\u2014 with their long-time spouse Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge, before the artists\u2019 deaths in 2020 and 2007, respectively.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"OnCourtesy M. LeBlanc<\/p>\n

In the exhibition\u2019s text, Pfeiffer called his coterie of artists a \u201csperm-cult.\u201d Though the moniker is a reference to a Los Angeles show he was involved in almost a decade prior, also involving Hawkins, I wondered aloud to him if \u201cOrgangrinder\u201d wasn\u2019t such a cult\u2019s mirror image: a journey into the abyss, a womb that brings life and death, a chrysalis that shatters when your own edges are pierced by another, a mythical hole to the center of the world. While the image of the phallus appears throughout \u201cOrgangrinder,\u201d it is a subject that requires a partner, phallic power being dependent upon penetration, an orifice open and willing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We came to the agreement that within this artistic coterie of Pfeiffer\u2019s \u201csacred monsters,\u201d both the hole and the phallus are present, mingling together like the scent of church incense. The idea of a church, and its interior, are ultimately what Pfeiffer aimed to evoke through the show\u2019s installation\u2014you approach the work like an altar or a cross: you kneel, you raise your eyes, you remain silent, you feel your breath catch, you let a door open inside you, and something unspeakable enters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This notion of the sacred, the screaming stuff that reveals language\u2019s impotence, is why I thought of Britney Spears\u2019s 1999 debut single \u201c . . . Baby One More Time\u201d for the title of this review. When the singer croons \u201cWhen I\u2019m not with you, I lose my mind, Give me a sign, Hit me, baby, one more time,\u201d I think of God and violence, the limits and needs of the flesh, the annihilation of the self, the precariousness of faith, and the necessity of longing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In other words, I think of the stuff of \u201cOrgangrinder.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOrgangrinder\u201d<\/strong>
Through 8\/29: Wed\u2013Sat 11 AM\u20135 PM, M. LeBlanc<\/a>, 3514 W. Fullerton<\/p>\n

Reader Recommends: ARTS & CULTURE<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tJuly 3, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When looking at Los Angeles artist Richard Hawkins\u2019s two collages, I couldn\u2019t decide whether the young man in…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":958132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[960,385392,5386,1818,4289,385393,77591,323839],"class_list":["post-958131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-chicago","tag-genesis-breyer-p-orridge","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-listings","tag-m-leblanc","tag-reader-recommended","tag-robert-mapplethorpe"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116980146118958171","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=958131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/958131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/958132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=958131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=958131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=958131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}