For their 25th anniversary, Jackass staged an art show at Complex LA in West Hollywood. Screen Slate is one of many institutions that has long celebrated Jackass as Art, as students of our pioneering zine a jackass reader: from the makers of screen slate will remember. But with this new exhibition, the Jackass crew made this perspective on their work perhaps not quite explicit but cheekily implicit. Works of fine art inspired by the transgressive, punk/skater-coded prank show were on exhibition from November 14-16, including paintings and sculptures by the Jackass performers themselves alongside well-known photos and videos from their (typically) behind-the-scenes collaborators (Spike Jonze, Jeff Tremaine, Lance Bangs, Dimitry Elyashkevich, Rick Kosick, Jaime Owens, et al), and blue-chip artists such as Damien Hirst.
The exhibition’s opening spilled across two galleries and onto the sidewalks of Fairfax Avenue, and The Damned’s anthemic “Smash It Up” flooded the air as we approached. Members of the Jackass crew matriculated alongside newer comedians like Eric André and Tim Robinson. Trucker caps, ironic tattoos, and limited edition skate brand drops were draped over badly healed bones, as guests dabbed each other up and waited in line for the free drinks from the tequila sponsor.
“We were trying to come up with an idea for our 25th anniversary celebration, and it was [Johnny] Knoxville who said, ‘Let’s do an art show,’” said Jeff Tremaine, Jackass co-creator and director. “I paint, so it got me out of my laziness. It motivated me.” Tremaine’s painting, The Osprey, is a large canvas in jeweled tones. His brushwork is precise and his thick paint application creates a three-dimensionality that protrudes off the canvas. The painting’s vibe is firmly West Coast, depicting a crowned figure in a style that combines tarot imagery, circus advertisements, and dollar store saint iconography.
In the smaller of the two exhibition spaces, Knoxville was wearing a fake mustache and a red wine colored suit, exuding the impish boyishness that’s made him a beloved star for over two decades. He appeared to be relishing the “Art Show” conceit of the event as he intermittently adjusted his falling whiskers.
“For our 25th anniversary, I was going to reach out to select cast and crew members and artists we admire, then I was like, you know what, I’m going to reach out to big artists because the worst they can say is no,” said Knoxville, beaming in front of his own dioramas and an impressive wall-mounted sculpture like a proud elementary school science fair participant. “We’ve been so fortunate—there’s incredible work in the show.” After warmly greeting a few more of the seemingly unending cascade of familiar faces, Knoxville humbly continued, “Everyone has been outpouring love for us and so many people participated—it just blows me away.” About his own works on display, Knoxville remarked, “I do have some stuff. The sculpture of me, Jeff, and Spike. Of course Jeff’s getting hit in the nuts.”
Male genitalia was a major theme of the exhibition. Testicles, and the violence done to them, were mostly implied, with many of the works primarily focusing on penises, including a painting created using said organ. In what these critics found to be the most compelling of the penis works, the familiar skull and crossed crutches Jackass logo dons a beret and one of the crutches is replaced with a paint brush. The brightly colored work, Penis painted logo by the artist Pricasso, was accompanied with a video showing the canvas being painted with the artist’s penis just in case you doubted its anatomical provenance.
The prevailing bright color palette, industrial materials, sloppy exuberance, and lowbrow focus gave much of the original fine art works a Paul McCarthy has a residency at the Alien Workshop feel, offering a unified if somewhat limited range of expressive possibilities. One large scale work by Damien Hirst offered the simplest and most clever distillation of the night, with the Jackass logo fashioned from collected cigarette butts. The untitled work integrated the theme in an obvious yet satisfying way.
The well-known, cherubic NYC communist, cinephile, and author A.M. Gittlitz, who wore a Spectacle t-shirt as he sipped his free drink, was particularly interested in Hirst’s work. “I am not familiar with Jackass, but I’m a collector of Damien Hirst’s work,” he said. “I’m here to purchase this sculpture of cigarette butts in [the] shape of a skull and some crutches.” When told he would have to ask for the price of the work, which was not listed, he told us the price did not matter.
Skater and podcaster Tony Boswell expressed a reverence for Jackass in our conversation with him, giving the sense that attending the show was a doffing of the cap of sorts. “As a 38-year old man, Jackass is very important to me,” said Boswell. “When I was 13, there was a bootleg VHS of CKY2K going around my friends. We all watched it together one day and realized [that] at the end of CKY2K it went into some crazy hentai, so me and all my friends were introduced to Jackass and hentai essentially at the same time through a bootleg.” Appraising the exhibition, Boswell commented, “ [It] still very much has that grit, DIY punk aesthetic in a way that’s still not corny.”
Jason Acuña, better known as Wee Man, was all smiles as he posed for pictures with friends and fans. The Jackass favorite’s comments seemed to sum up the evening. “[I’m] super stoked about this Jackass anniversary—it’s been my life,” he said. “I hope it inspires kids to get off their phones and do things the way we were doing it when we didn’t have phones, because that’s what started all of this. ” When we proposed hitting oneself in the dick with a phone as a generational compromise, Wee Man suggested an alternative: “Smash your phone with your dick!”
