Biosquat; earliest mainstream buzz.
Charles D'Ambrosio is a regular contributor to the New Yorker and recipient of the Lange-Taylor Prize. The following bits are from his article in Nest Mag/winter03-4. Any emphasis added.
"...the rudiments of an eco-village...The visual impact of the place is surreal...perhaps (a)...small resonant civilization...I was willing to believe in things I did not understand...Powerful and persuasive...never less than fascinating...showy, protesting intelligence...the effort of translating stubborn matter into an immaterial vision is evident. It's slow going....the freedom described here is a spiritual event-an apotheosis...an escape from the poverty of the corporeal world, a gripe you always hear from lyric poets, saints, and visionaries..."
"...(the artist's)...renegade role in relation to the gallery world...Biosquat('s)...materials are humble...the work of a ...devoted soul...eccentric and enigmatic...undertaken in near total disregard of public opinion- and may one day resemble the Watts Towers or the Palais Idéal (emphasis ed.). Biosquat is packed with thought, textlike, and its themes-cycling nomadism, trash worship, solar power- touch everything from the fences to the toilets...the tricycle toilet at Biosquat worked wonderfully. It didn't stink at all, a claim I'd seriously doubted..."
One of the laws of Biosquat...nothing could be what it was originally...right in the grain of a particular brand of American genius (kustom kars)...(that) isn't all that different in spirit from a SoCal gear head like Ed "Big Daddy" Roth...designer and visionary...guru/hero...Everything...at Biosquat is an attempt to render a vivid interior external...and as such, (the) bikes are primarily an index into the visionary mind of the maker(s)."
"...a world of signs and wonders, of marvels and revelations, of continuous amazement. Every object at Biosquat is tinkered with until it resembles nothing else. Even the (Biosquatter)'s fondness for neologisms is a way of wrenching old words into something new and unique."
"Each object...is an attempt to seize life at a moment of glory, to embody an essence and hold it, stilling the ephemeral, apotheosizing what would otherwise pass, as all things pass, The mutant bikes, bamboo beds, the gnat goggles, the Chicano robots, and the (bike) domes are all singular- freaky, a one-off, an aberrance, a whole world of exceptions. All of it exists somewhere beyond sadness or mistakes or missed opportunities, because, transformed, there's nothing to compare it to. Its meant to speak to you in the language of the burning bush, its supposed to be a walk on water, its all truth of another order, like the coin Christ pulls from the mouth of the fish to pay the temple tax. These are called miracles, of course, and they break a lot of natural laws, but as transformations, utterly singular, beyond argument, they too are meant to convince you that the kingdom has already arrived, here on Earth."
Note: 07/04 Biosquat is being readied as a "post apocalypse" sci-fi film location.