![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sleek-mag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/02\/PeresProjects_JamesFranco03.jpg\")
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James Franco explores our love of him and his love of us, artists.<\/strong><\/p>\n James Franco\u2019s face, usually found adorning Gucci ads, movies and celebrity gossip sites, is seen everywhere in Gay Town, his second solo show with Berlin\u2019s Peres Projects Gallery. Its features are encountered behind sunglasses, bushy beards and masks of his own face. Yet Franco\u2019s densely packed multi-media show is a rarity \u2013 a truly non-vanity project by a genuine celebrity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Rather than cash in on name recognition to draw crowds to DIY Cezannes (a la Bob Dylan, Anthony Hopkins and Sly Stallone), Franco responds to celebrity\u2019s centrality in contemporary art\u2019s discourse by using his insider position to offer a special perspective on fandom and stardom. With humble nods to Alex Bag, Cindy Sherman, Douglas Gordon, Paul McCarthy and other artists revered for critically dissecting Hollywood stereotypes, Franco creates a show about his interest in our interest in \u201cJames Franco.\u201d As he explains, \u201cTo make a self-portrait of my public persona, instead of me in my bedroom, is to make my art about something larger.\u201d \u00a0<\/p>\n Huge in scope and hugely accessible for viewers and potential collectors, the exhibition consisted of 500 rugs, each one priced at $500. Many rugs present screenshots of fans\u2019 blogs, gossip sites and Huffington Post slams of Franco\u2019s social life, sex life and intellectual endeavors, over which Franco scrawls defensive notes. Others puckishly play with fans\u2019 assumptions about Franco. Featuring a mysterious blond girl as his paramour, they present a straight bad-boy lover image of Franco that is counterbalanced by the show\u2019s title and a brilliant low-fi video reenactment of one fan\u2019s Slash Fiction fantasies of Franco having sex with Spider Man and prison inmates.\u00a0<\/p>\n At Franco\u2019s press conference, German and visiting journalists asked about his sexuality and drug habits, thereby proving his premise correct. We can\u2019t separate Franco\u2019s roles or his public persona from his true self as an actor, artist and man. And that recognition itself \u00a0is fertile material for art \u2013 which only someone with Franco\u2019s status and intelligence can properly mine. As one rug, hidden behind a plywood silhouette of a house instructs, \u201cCindy Sherman is not recognised at her own show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" James Franco explores our love of him and his love of us, artists. James Franco\u2019s face, usually found adorning Gucci ads, movies and celebrity gossip sites, is seen everywhere in Gay Town, his second solo show with Berlin\u2019s Peres Projects Gallery. Its features are encountered behind sunglasses, bushy beards and masks of his own face….<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[219,34,665,666,667],"class_list":["post-8034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fashion","tag-ana-finel-honigman","tag-berlin","tag-james-franco","tag-peres-projects","tag-przemek-pyszczek"],"acf":{"main_category":null,"legacy":"1","exclude_from_ads":null,"hero_title":null,"subtitle":null,"hero":null,"teasers":null,"facebook_image":null,"related_articles":null,"next_article":null,"sleek_card_focus":null,"content":null},"yoast_head":"\n