"Guns and Ecstasy" by Scott Hove @ Spoke Art Gallery (May 2)

PRESS: "As we enter the Spring gallery season, Spoke Art is proud to announce our first event of May, "Guns and Ecstasy", the latest solo show by Bay Area artist Scott Hove. Known for his ferocious cake and taxidermy inspired mixed media sculptures, Hove has created a highly topical body of work for this show focusing on the fetishization of assault weapons in an artistic point of view to the ongoing gun debate.

Also included in "Guns and Ecstasy" is the debut of the "A Pentagonal Disco Infinity Chamber", a transportable installation piece which brings an immersive slice of the artist's Cakeland studio to San Francisco."

"Guns and Ecstasy" opens Thursday, May 2nd @ Spoke Art Gallery, with an opening reception from 6pm - 10pm. The artist will be in attendance and complimentary refreshments will be served. Exhibiting thru May 25th, here are more images and words from the artist himself:

""The title, "Guns and Ecstasy", alludes to having the freedom to choose a driving fantasy that will affect our outlook, which in turn directly affects everyone around us. We can choose a paranoia fantasy where we need to fortify against an imminent attack from uncontrollable aspect of a crumbling society, grasping for a sense of control. This position seems to be embodied and leveraged by the NRA, and the assault weapon has become the central fetish object of the dialogue. We can also choose to look for connection, beauty and celebration, and surrender ourselves to a world where nothing will ever be certain again." ~mentions Scott Hove

[7 x images in slideshow above for CAKELAND / Full-screen viewing]

"For this series of sculptures, I have chosen to give the hyper-masculinized aesthetic of the assault weapon a forced-feminization in the form of pretty cake decoration, and in the process deconstructed the paranoia aesthetic. I have also constructed a cake-disco-ecstasy-infinity chamber, the purpose of which is to offer a space to surrender one's paranoia fantasy to an experience of the ecstatic, thereby bringing the viewer back to a pre-paranoia state of being. It should also be noted that with these and all of my previous works, the distinction between safety and paranoia is never totally clear... good luck in making the right choice!" ~shares Scott Hove.