review of Meat After Meat Joy, curated by Heide Hatry, at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery, New York, October 16 - November 15, 2008

I sing the song of meat, of its joys and discontents. For text demanded is now text made manifest. For meat is not only murder but also medium. Not merely the flesh, bone and sinew of corporeal existence but also an aesthetic construct replete with its peculiar and innate ontology. Not just tissue but also a symbolic projection of the impolite body into the rarefied space of the contemporary art world.

As for Heide Hatry, who participates in the exhibition at Daneyal Mahmood Gallery as both its curator and one of the artists, meat is a sine qua non, an act of brazen clarity, revelation and defiance somewhat akin to William Burrough's famous explication of the title of his novel Naked Lunch: "a frozen moment when everyone sees what is on the end of every fork."