Kozo's Permanent Impermanence' turns the machine into myth | amNewYork

A 1965 Ford Mustang Coupe is presented as more than a status object, functioning as canvas, relic, provocation, and moving chapel. The car carries American mythology of appetite and escape, including speed, rebellion, labor, masculinity, class, fantasy, and longing. During Frieze Art Week, the multidisciplinary artist and CART DEPT create Permanent Impermanence at Free Parking in the West Village. The Mustang is painted at Red Hook Detail Co. and meticulously rendered with Francois Lemoyne’s The Apotheosis of Hercules, originally a celebrated ceiling painting from the Salon d’Hercule at Versailles. Hercules is brought from aristocratic heavens to steel and American muscle, making the muscle car a new body for myth, triumph, suffering, and transcendence.

"Kozo seems to understand that a car, like a painting, is never merely an object. It is a vessel for mythology. It carries memory, masculinity, class, labor, fantasy, and longing. During Frieze Art Week, the multidisciplinary artist and CART DEPT took that truth and drove it directly into art history with Permanent Impermanence, an exhibition at Free Parking in the West Village."

"At the heart of the show sits a 1965 Ford Mustang Coupe, painted at Red Hook Detail Co., across which Kozo meticulously rendered Francois Lemoyne's The Apotheosis of Hercules, the celebrated ceiling painting of the Salon d'Hercule at Versailles. Not every car enthusiast will see Kozo's almost Michelangelo-like touch in the gesture, although that may be precisely what makes the work so compelling."

"The artist does not simply decorate the Mustang. He consecrates it. Hercules, once suspended above the viewer in the aristocratic heavens of Versailles, is brought down to earth and stretched across steel, speed, and American appetite. The palace ceiling finds a new body. The muscle car becomes myth."

"Lemoyne's original work, completed in the 18th century for Versailles, was itself an act of theatrical elevation. Hercules, the mortal hero turned god, rises into Olympus as a symbol of triumph, labor, suffering, and transcendence."

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