Having recently adopted collage as a vehicle for his presentation of transgression, New York–based artist Dash Snow violates images with force in the more than fifty works included in this exhibition, titled “Silence is the only true friend that shall never betray you.” They present some of America’s most beloved icons dismembered, mocked, and occasionally covered in cum. Marilyn Monroe is depicted in Women of the Gestapo, 2006, as a barricade for soldiers to hide behind; Jack Kennedy’s nose is cut off; and celebrity outlaw Patty Hearst is torn to pieces. Sexualized female bodies are fused to hypodermic needles, a literalization of a visual violence in which all is permitted and all is profaned. Snow’s use of iconic figures is no Warholian reverie; this is appropriation as aggression, an attempt to expose the meaninglessness of the empty, endlessly circulating image. He has come a long way from the documentary photography for which he is best known, and now grasps at something beyond representation.
