Art de Toilette Local Artist Pays Homage to the Porcelain God Written by Gina Comparini A tiny outdoor closet on the second floor of a Baker Street apartment is an intimate place for a tattoo virgin to receive his first. Dave Tavacol isn't nervous, isn't sweating, and isn't holding his best friend's hand tightly. He's more worried about the lighting. "Is that OK for you?" he asks in a concerned voice, aiming a blazing light at his forearm where tattoo artist Gunga will penetrate him with a needle. She nods yes with her wild, white mane. "He's such an artist," someone says with a chuckle. The session has become an event, yet there's an ambiance of gentleness. This trend seems to permeate Tavacol's artistic life; what should be formal is social, and what is normally familiar is surreal. On this clammy San Francisco evening, Tavacol, a conceptual artist, tattoos a tiny bulls-eye over a metal chip he had surgically implanted under the skin of his forearm last September. The chip doesn't have any data in it, but Tavacol had it implanted as a statement against animals being forced to have the same surgery. The novelty, rather than the practicality of the surgery, seems to be what interests Tavacol. Now Gunga is worried. What if she strikes the chip with the tattoo needle? Will blood squirt about, hitting the walls and ceiling? Tavacol remains calm, reassuring her that nothing will go wrong. "Lets get this ball rolling!" he says without smiling. This is exactly the kind of odd drama Tavacol thrives on. Contradiction and spectacle can also be found in his sculpture, in his toilet creation and in his more social, active artworks. To participate in Tavacol's active art, one can turn to page 42 of the October/November Piercing Fans International Quarterly where he sits with his back turned, head sheepishly bowed, exposing a canvas sign reading "FETISHIST." It's sewn into his back, just below the nape of the neck. Walking around for several days with the sign exposed to the public, "...to force people to wonder about their own views of stigmatization and shame first hand--not just theoretically," Tavacol's opus surely turned some heads. "He's definitely an artist working in expanding ideas," says Doug Hall, one of Tavacol's professors from the New Genres department of the Art Institute. "There's a strangeness about what he creates, a sort of surrealism. He uses themes of hygiene and cleanliness and how they relate back to commemorative images." Bathroom habits are mental seats most don't think too much about or try to psychoanalyze. One just goes and that's it. No one really discusses what happens in society's psyche when the door closes and the water runs. But the Bathroom World exists, and through installation art, Tavacol forces his audience to participate and ponder where some of their hang-ups originate. "People are touchy about their bathrooms," says Tavacol. "Many clean and scrub them regularly, almost to the point of being obsessive." One of his installations called IMMACULATE illustrates the desire for hyper-cleanliness. The project is made to occupy an alternative space or gallery where people can walk by and around it. It's made up of five bathroom stalls, without doors, and inside each stall is a pedestal sink and a medicine cabinet. A gooseneck faucet emerges from each sink with scented water pouring out. The medicine cabinets are simple and framed in stainless steel; a smooth, white, ceramic material replaces the mirror, and pools of halogen light focus on each sink's basin. The work is ultra-white and hyper-beautiful. "IMMACULATE is about that point in time when the mind moves beyond the body and everyday consciousness...where we seek cleansing, and perhaps, unconsciously, a sense of rebirth," says Tavacol. People create bathrooms, building some as large as bedrooms, and in turn, bathrooms shape human routine. Hidden habits surface in this semi-private place. The addict does his lines in the quiet coolness of the bathroom. He eats, he paces, he urinates, he models, but when he comes out, his time spent away becomes a void. Although some may suspect his actions, they have been concealed, but remain public. Tavacol relates to Freud by citing how the analyst's work is about tension just below the surface. Often this tension goes undiscovered and unsuspected. Take Tavacol's father, a well-respected surgeon who had it all: a beautiful wife and family, money, possessions, security. One evening, unsupervised by family or patients, he overdosed on pills, bringing his envied life to a dramatic close. Some might ask, "Who would have known?" No one did, which is what's at the root of Dave's conceptual art--beneath society's quiet, sublime facade are traits and ideas that may be too intense to see, but well worth looking deeply into. As the tattoo gun buzzes away, the irony continues. Gunga looks with worried blue eyes into Dave's face, expecting the worst to result from tattooing over a metal chip. Without flinching, Dave covets the tiny globs of ink rising to the surface of his flesh with each puncture. They're so beautiful, he muses. "But what do you feel?" a friend asks. Dave pauses, concentrates for a moment and readjusts the light with his left hand. "Nothing, actually." |ISSUE #3|FEATURES|A&E|INVESTIGATIVE| |GREEN WATCH|IN MOTION|FYI|INDEX|