Soup Villain (Part 1) - Genesis and pre-mythology.

So, I'm going to talk a little bit here about Soup Villain, who was this kind of mythical figure who inhabited my final project at University. He wasn't so much a series of different works as much as he was this combination of autobiography and just general tension and grief that consumed a lot of my time at University. I'd like to put a disclaimer here that a lot of this is my opinion, and I am not going to claim that Soup Villain is a work of genius. I'm sure a lot of what I say will make little sense, and I'd like to reassure you that if you find these ideas convoluted, it's not because you are not clever enough. It's because I was never clever enough to articulate Soup Villain well :P

I think the first thing to mention are the conditions that led up to the project. I came into University full of hope and brightness. I really wanted to be part of this broader art community, and to participate in the local scene. But the more I researched, the more I discovered about art history and the rise of commercial art, the more I realised that there was a kind of sickness in art, from the biggest galleries right down to the grassroots organisations. I felt art, in some way, could be a true foundation for society, or a kind of show of strength. Perhaps there was a way in which art could be a powerful force for good, but the more I looked around me, the more I understood that those who claimed to be part of such a force were merely performative. It wasn't really about unifying social thought towards the future. The art that surrounded me was either those using their practice purely for business, or as a soap box for validation (sometimes - often - for both). It didn't sit right with me. I don't think many artists are actually concerned with art for art's sake, but rather concern themselves with clout or the subject matter that their art discusses. A contemporary artist who paints about skiing likely paints to get the work out of the way, but would rather be skiing than painting, for example. To me, at least, I think that defeats the purpose of art. 

Towards the end of my first year I began sharing these concerns, and I was met with hostility and rejection from the staff body. They said my ideas were not relevant and not worth discussing. I should emphasise at this point that I was not attacking anyone or engaging in any offensive way. I would simply ask whether we were doing the right thing as artists. Then, I began to be excluded from discussions, and then later my works began to be side-lined in group shows ran by the University. Towards the end of my first year, my lecturers began calling me a bad artist and I was told by one lecturer that he regretted accepting my admission into the University. 

I felt this was unjust, and my work began to change. I used to criticise big corporate in my work (Coca Cola, Government institutions, etc.), but I knew in my heart somewhere that that wasn't the fight I was supposed to be engaging in. So instead, I turned on my University. This started halfway through my second year with a work called Trinity Project:

My work is the poster to the left that reads "I HAVE DESTROYED ALL ART. ALL MEANING OF ART IN THIS BUILDING IS STOLEN. I HAVE PUT IT INTO THIS TEXT".

This poster was considered the first shot in a very bloody feud between myself and the University, although I would contend that it really started with their treatment of me. I never credited the work to myself, and began using the pseudonym "Soup Villain". The name is obviously a play on "supervillain", because I began to feel the only way to continue on was to simply own the villainization I was getting, and the 'soup' came from comparisons between my earlier work and the work of Andy Warhol.

Trinity Project upset a lot of people, and I think it was chiefly because I was directly being confrontational to the work around me, which, if I'm being honest, I was disappointed in. My peers, however nice they were, would nonetheless ridicule my research, and considered my interest in philosophy (and reading in general) to be irrelevant to art. I felt that showed in the work they made, but you're welcome to make your own judgements on that. 

The statement on the poster was intended as less of a claim of strength, but more as a demonstration of how fickle "meaning" can be in art. You're not necessarily profound if what you make is a pretty picture with a metaphor in it. Political cartoonists achieve the same effect, and that's fine, but that's not the trade of fine art. Because anything can mean anything in art, I can simply claim to steal all meaning and it can be true. Whether this is offensive or not entirely rests on how desperate you are for your art to be read 'correctly'. Do you have to be seen exactly how you wish to be seen? Does your art have to be read in only one way? If so, is making and exhibiting art the best way for you to be sharing ideas?

I think Soup Villain had kind of entered this first maxim. I knew that, whatever Soup Villain was, he had to be confrontational. If I was told to back down, I would double down. My main responses from Trinity Project from the faculty especially was that I needed to tone down the confrontation, and that my work was too threatening. My response was to offer a crit. 

A crit, in art, typically involves discussion around people's work. In some way the point is to engage in both the weaknesses and the strengths of the piece in a manner that is not too harsh. The problem emerges when the environment does not support legitimate criticism, so the result is either excessive praise, or a kind of unpleasant passive-aggressiveness that never seeks to be direct. I wanted to be direct, and I knew I had to be aggressive. So I set up a donation box for art to be critiqued by me. After I had received 15 or so paintings and drawings, I began my crit:

I chose not to speak, and instead wore a ski mask, which to me was a direct response to me being considered too threatening. I was aiming to mirror the image of a terrorist, or a freedom fighter. Some kind of extreme presence. I destroyed every single piece. Some of them I would throw at a wall until they shattered, some I would rip apart, and others I would punch holes in with my fist. I hung up all the scraps on a bar above my studio space and presented them as an art piece. I don't think I ever took any photos sadly. 

That crit had a mixed response. The students seemed to love it, which I was relieved by, because in all honesty I did feel bad destroying all of their work. But the lecturers were less impressed. My feedback this time was again to back down, but also that Soup Villain shouldn't continue.

I think I just want to summarise this part by saying Soup Villain was a reflex to pain, and I'd like to highlight that I was one of those students touted as the "golden child" when I started. I don't think that says anything exceptional about me. All it indicates is that my University thought initially that I would be a suitable candidate to improve their image. The same is true of all "golden children", both the ones that are gifted/skilful, and those who are not. I think this knowledge however, will serve as a good primer to part 2.

That's the end of part 1 of the Soup Villain blog! Part 2 won't be so heavily about the real life making of Soup Villain, and more just about what Soup Villain became. I think it's more interesting to engage with Soup when I don't flatly lay it all out to be easily read, so I hope the second part has a bit more amiguity. Anyways, I hope you enjoyed!