Dick Van Dick: Everything Louder Than Everything Else

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jacquard weaving, hand-poured candles, altered furniture, acrylic on velvet, gouache on paper, found and fabricated objects
2018
Soho20 Gallery
Brooklyn, NY

Dick Van Dick: Everything Louder Than Everything Else is the hypothetical exhibition of the costumes, furniture, and objects of the “late” Dick Van Dick, Oliveira’s drag king persona. Dick Van Dick is a outlandish Latinx Liberace who also happens to be a extradimensional being sent to earth with an urgent message about our future. The exhibition takes place in a undetermined future timeline where Dick has been mysteriously and suddenly called back to his home world. The installation references the curatorial language of Graceland, building the world and mythos of Dick Van Dick for visitors. One of Dick’s sequined three piece suits is on display in the installation, along with an outlandishly embellished chair, foot stool, and desk, a velvet portrait, a apocalyptic jacquard weaving, a chandelier adorned with corn cob dildos, and an assortment of found and handmade personal items. Hand-poured, lavender-scented souvenir candles in the shape of Dick’s bust were on sale inside the installation.  

Dick’s extra dimensional, non-human-ness is a reference to Liberace’s own obsession with plastic surgery and costumes that blur, expand, and confuse the borders and materiality of his body. The cheeky, indirect references to his alien-ness are also a reference to the cognitive dissonance of a public that prizes the electricity and inventiveness that springs from queer culture while demonizing and erasing the queerness of pop cultural figures. The framing of this installation as a recreation of a part of Dick’s mansion deals with the pseudo-spiritual way that performers are enshrined in American culture, with pilgrimages to Graceland and Paisley Park replacing Lourdes and Bethlehem.