This series includes over 280 images, it is one of my favorite ongoing art projects; while the first pictures date from 2007, the project started at the end of 2004 before I had a digital camera to document my work. With this project I show that the fascinating beauty of modern art (abstract expressionism particularly in this case), lies in the cunningness of your brain to unclog your bathtub drain, and deceive you that it is elitist art. We all love elitist art, don't we? But instead of you doing the bathtub-drain-unclogging, I will do it for you; and then you can go ahead and revere the accumulated dirt.... Think of a Franz Kline black & white abstract expressionist painting: How much money an art collector pays for it!? Yet I just recreated it by unclogging my bathtub drain!? The idea of this project is to mock the excessive reverence of modern art, while the spent millions to hang such garbage on a wall could've been spent for social causes. Oh, of course, the money will not be spent for social causes. But is it a surprise? Let's not forget that modern art is “retinal” art (Marcel Duchamp); it is supposed to be pleasing to the eye, make a sell, and it has no other obligations. I am not exempt from the “retinal” art obsession, and I also fall into the trap of finding beauty in the arrangement of shapes and colors: a bunch of splatter arranged in a way that is somewhat pleasing to the eye. I don't question that it is what it is – an abstract expressionist art; I question the behavior of the elite who will spend millions on modern art, instead of channeling the money to socially-beneficial causes.... To be more detailed, how is my fake elitist art achieved? I have finished taking a shower and scrubbed off my body's dirt, the running water is stopped, the drain has been unclogged from the dirt (with my fingers), the splatter has been smeared on the tiles; I strictly forbid myself to rearrange the hairs so that they look more like an action-painting and free-form creation with no alterations, (I do however color-modify the images and increase the contrast). Then, the picture has been taken. But instead of blowing up these images to large size and selling them for millions, this elitist “masterwork” will go back in the garbage, while the non-fake abstract expressionist garbage wouldn't.... Clogging your brain with elitist BS ideas lies in your ability to unclog your drain. Here, I did it for your (so that you don't have to)... but I am hoping that by unclogging my drain I will unclog your brain.
