Greasetank

"you don't come to the light by suppressing the darkness"

In the September 2003 issue of Australia's Blue magazine, Brad Johnston summed it up this way:

"Greasetank's world is populated with brutal, muscled thugs and their blond, boyish victims, with a chorus of liquored-up good ol' boys chanting for the kill. It's a hypermasculine, fascist hell-paradise, and with its homoerotic edge and potent use of 20th century symbols, it's also unsettlingly familiar. These are universal nightmares, filtered through the sensibilities of one man, a gay man, and the results - love them or hate them - are powerful."

Excerpts of the text, archived from the Queer Arts interview.

Political correctness seems absent from Greasetank's vocabulary, as many of his compositions depict the most degrading and alarming aspects of bigotry and homophobia. "I'm pushing it about as far as it can go," he says. "They're odd bedfellows, brutality and sexuality. That one should feed off the other is a deep mystery to me, but it would be a big mistake to cover my eyes and pretend it isn't so."

Then why not let sleeping dogs lie? "Well, they're not lying, you know, and never have been. They're just below the surface, waiting to pounce, and if we don't throw the light of discernment on them and give them their due, they will continue to operate in darkness, just beyond our control. Jung called this phenomenon the Shadow, and he felt very strongly that we should confront it. My Greasetank art, if anything, is designed to reveal one aspect of that Shadow - the sadistic and ultimately pathetic pleasure we can experience in our gonads when confronted with the suffering of others. The closest term I've been able to find for it is the German word schadenfreude.

"If you're conditioned in a certain way, you can't help but encounter those impulses when viewing my art. And that's why I believe it is art, and not just an exercise in poor taste."

So what is it that awakens in us when we view these images? Repulsion? Lust? Indifference? A desire for unbridled power or abject humiliation? Greasetank believes that confronting these impulses and understanding them will help us throw light on that Shadow, and declares hopefully: "I think we will all be better off because of it."

"I suspect I'll be abandoning the Greasetank art at some point when I've thrown so much light on those dark urges that I find them neither repulsive nor appealing. When the day comes when I'm totally indifferent, then I'll move on. Until then, I'm not too concerned about what others think of the violence in my art," Greasetank states candidly. "I'm neither proud of it nor ashamed of it. I do know, however, that I'd never get anything done in life if I relied on the approval of others."

Excerpts of the text, archived from the Tom of Finland Foundation.

"I don’t know exactly what name to give my art. I just know it’s what I do. It offends some, fascinates others, and turns on quite a few. I believe there's a largely unexplored region in the human psyche, something Jung called "the Shadow," that many of us are reluctant to face. It isn’t pretty, but it must be examined at if we’re to gain control over it. Until we do, it exerts its influence in secret, which can lead to real-life violence of all kinds."

"Another artist featured on my site secreted away hundreds of his works in cardboard boxes for decades. Just what is there to be ashamed of? That we harbor such dark fantasies within us? If so, I don’t remember putting them there. They just sprouted along with my pubic hair. Sort of like being gay, and I see no reason to censor myself."

"Personally, I would recoil in horror were any of the material on my site to take place in real life, but please allow me the freedom to create my art. That’s all I, or any artist asks for, really; the freedom to explore our God-given talents. I accept whatever responsibility is mine, and pray that life deals justly and compassionately with me; but I refuse to decide for others what they can view or read. I'm not superior enough to make that judgment call."

"Perhaps my art represents all that is base in the human spirit. I don't know, but I do know one thing—you don't come to the light by suppressing the darkness. Everything must eventually be uncovered and revealed for what it is, and therein lies the real danger of censorship. It stifles our spiritual growth."