Oct 20, 3-4pm

Book signing with Tabboo! for the new monograph, Tabboo!: The Art of Stephen Tashjian.

A fascination with figurines and flowers, portraiture and puppets, cityscapes and celebrities defines Tabboo!’s everyday atmosphere, and comprises the source of his paintings. His encompassing, bittersweet worldview is often transferred to the stage in indefinable, sparkling performances. It is also reflected in the work of his peers—other artists. When asked in a 1995 interview with Linda Simpson about his early work, Tabboo! noted: "The subject matter was drag, glamour, ladies’ shoes, lingerie, hairdos, vinyl—same as now." But always to these exuberant themes, Tabboo! has added defiant resolve, from poignant tributes to friends lost to AIDS, to fairy tales fashioned into sophisticated treatises on gentrification.

Tabboo! The Art of Stephen Tashjian is the first monograph devoted to this legendary underground painter, puppeteer, and performer. Chronicling the young artist’s arrival to the apocalyptic East Village of the ‘80s—where he established his own brand of painterly mastery that continues to today—Tabboo! The Art of Stephen Tashjian also presents a vast archive of flyers, snapshots, and other ephemera that charts the development of the drag performance scene from the Pyramid Club to Wigstock, highlighting its intersection with popular culture and the ‘80s art world.

Edited by Lia Gangitano. Texts by Jack Pierson, Elisabeth Kley, and Lia Gangitano.
Published by Damiani
224 pages
ISBN 9788862082648