Photo: Michelle Silva
Photo: Dennis Letbetter, August 23, 2007
Photo: Monica Angrand
MIKE KUCHAR
Curriculum Vitae
1942 Born in New York, NY
Lives and works in San Francisco, CA
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SELECTED EXHIBITIONS
François Ghebaly is honored to present Big, Bad Boys, the gallery’s third solo exhibition with legendary artist and filmmaker Mike Kuchar. Big, Bad Boys marks the gallery’s second exhibition at our new West Hollywood space located at 1109 N Poinsettia Place, West Hollywood.
Mike Kuchar has been a majorly influential figure in the underground film and comics scenes since the 1960s, first in his hometown of the Bronx and, from the 1970s on, in the creative hotbed of San Francisco. Together with his twin brother George, the Kuchars gained cult recognition for their over-the-top, no-budget films that sent up Hollywood epics, weepy romances, and sci-fi B movies. In iconic films like Sins of the Fleshapoids (1965), The Craven Sluck (1967), and Death Quest of the Ju-Ju Cults(1976), Mike developed his distinctive style that jettisoned traditional narrative structure and acting professionalism in favor of extravagant, tender sagas that would have a significant impact on emerging theorizations and expressions of camp as an artistic sensibility.
On the occasion of Tom of Finland’s birthday (8th May), Tom of Finland Foundation and The Community have curated a group exhibition, supported by Diesel, presenting Tom of Finland Foundation’s permanent collection.
All Together explores the erotic art collection consisting of thousands of artworks, spanning multiple decades and encompassing all media and techniques. This exhibition is possible because of the Foundation’s efforts in preserving the work of Queer artists, many of whom have faced discrimination and misrepresentation due to the nature of what they create.
For thirty-seven years, Tom of Finland Foundation has been building the world’s most extensive collection of LGBTQ+ art. The diverse curation of this show highlights the stories of over seventy featured artists and comprises more than two hundred works of art from the 1940s to the present day.
The opening in Venice coincides with the first weekend of the Venice Biennale and the opening in Paris celebrates Tom’s birth date.
Mike Kuchar
Broken Gods
January 4 - February 2, 2020
Reception: Saturday January 11, 6-9pm
François Ghebaly Gallery presents a group show entitled Bad Peach, which will include the work of Mike Kuchar opening August 10, 2019 and on view until September 7, 2019.
SYPHILIS is curated by Adam Cohen and Anton Kern. Syphilis is an exhibition that reflects on hope and fear, pleasure and mortality. The idea originated from a conversation about this disease and how it can serve as a metaphor. Artists in the show explore themes of love and lechery in equal measure. The exhibition is on view at Rental Gallery from July 27th - August 22nd, 2018.
Mike Kuchar in Ghebaly Gallery’s group exhibition Liquid Dreams.
Just around the corner from jewelers Harry Winston, that midtown Manhattan temple devoted to the rituals of heterosexuality, Anton Kern Gallery is hosting an artist whose work could make many a bride blush. Journey up a white marble staircase to the third floor, past the gallery’s bathroom and some primly rendered wall text that warns “this exhibition contains graphic imagery,” and you’ll enter a world predicated on rather different fantasies of coupling.
Here, in a show simply titled Drawings by Mike!, are twenty-two neatly framed ink-and-felt-tip-pen cartoons of tousle-haired Caucasian bohunks engaged in a variety of joyously, nakedly homoerotic situations: skinny dipping, crotch grabbing, pec rubbing, tit sucking. Their bare asses are, without exception, spheric and shiny, like the juiciest apple you’d ever hope to bite.
AS AN ILLUSTRATOR, MY AIM IS TO AMUSE THE EYE AND SPARK IMAGINATION, wrote the great American artist and filmmaker Mike Kuchar in Primal Male, a book of his collected drawings. TO CREATE TITILLATING SCENES THAT REFRESH THE SOUL…AND PUT A BIT MORE “FUN” TO VIEWING PICTURES — and that he has done for over five decades. “Drawings by Mike!” is an exhibition of erotic illustrations at Anton Kern Gallery, one of the fall season’s great feasts for the eye and a welcome homecoming for one of New York’s most treasured prodigal sons.
Opening reception for Drawings by Mike! at Anton Kern Gallery on Thursday, September 7th from 6–8pm. Exhibition runs until October 7th, 2017. In conjunction with the exhibition, a screening of select films, including Kuchar’s seminal Sins of the Fleshapoids, will be shown at the Core Club Cinema on Friday, September 8, 2017 from 7 p.m. RSVP is required for this event. For more information please contact Nadia Fristensky at rsvp@antonkerngallery.com.
July 23, 2016
Mike Kuchar was born in the Bronx in New York in 1942, a few minutes before his twin, George. At age 12, the twins started to make films using an 8mm camera their mother gave them. They became central to the 1960s New York underground film scene, screening work alongside Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Jack Smith.
SELECTED PRESS
Thanks to the efforts of the Kuchar Brothers Trust, in collaboration with Anthology and Francois Ghebaly Gallery, Mike Kuchar’s DEATH QUEST OF THE JU-JU CULTS, has been newly restored! Arguably Mike’s solo magnum opus, DEATH QUEST is a mini-epic that gleefully and lovingly combines two of Mike’s favorite – if seemingly irreconcilable – genres. What appears at first to be a straightforward prehistoric tale soon morphs into something else entirely, with the deux ex machina appearance of…sorry, no spoilers. In any case, whatever the genre, DEATH QUEST was made with a nearly non-existent budget, but with admirably game actors, Mike’s uniquely resourceful visual gifts, and his inimitable ability to combine mischievous parody with wide-eyed sincerity.
John Wolf Fine Art is pleased to announce its inclusion in the Spring/Break Art Show 2018 with an exhibition entitled, “Secret Gay Box” opening Friday, October 12th, 2018. The theme of the 2018 edition of the fair is ‘Stranger Comes to Town’ — an artistic examination of those who are seemingly or actually different than the world around them.
Artists include Andrew Brischler, Andrew Salgado, Andy Warhol, Brian Andrew Whiteley, David Wojnarowicz, Don Joint, Hossein Edalatkhah, Jack Pierson, Jose Gonzalo Garcia Munoz, Joseph La Piana, Justin Olerud, Lucas Michael, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mark Beard, Matt Siegle, Michael Stamm, Mike Kuchar, Patrick Angus, Puppies Puppies, Rashaad Newsome, Raymond Pettibon, and Stuart Sandford.
SYPHILIS is curated by Adam Cohen and Anton Kern. Syphilis is an exhibition that reflects on hope and fear, pleasure and mortality. The idea originated from a conversation about this disease and how it can serve as a metaphor. Artists in the show explore themes of love and lechery in equal measure. The exhibition is on view at Rental Gallery from July 27th - August 22nd, 2018.
SELECTED INTERVIEWS
Mike Kuchar is well known for his films. John Waters cites him as his hero, which is a pretty big compliment. But he’s always been an illustrator; the work has just been more anonymous. Kuchar has always been successful in obscurity’s sense. He worked as a magazine retoucher in the 1960s and, after moving to California, became a go-to name in the then underground comic scene. While he and his brother George Kuchar are widely known film directors, Mike has always been drawing and painting, gathering attention of a much smaller audience.
Opening just last week, Anton Kern Gallery has curated an exhibition of some of Mike’s private collection on view through September. The drawings on exhibit have never been published or shown publicly before, so on the eve of his opening, Mike answered some questions I had about the works going into the premiere.
Mike Kuchar is a true San Francisco treasure. His uncompromising output spans more than sixty years, and reminds us of the often forgotten value of individual vision and non-conformity. The few meetings I have had with Mike always leave me feeling completely inspired, and this time was no exception. Below are excerpts from that wide ranging two-hour conversation, between Mike, Gordon, and myself, which took place in my studio on May 18th, 2016.
—Matt Borruso
January 29, 2015
“Movies should have sex appeal,” says Mike Kuchar. “It’s a basic fundamental quality and helps in making it bearable to watch.” It’s the same bravado that seared through the filmmaker’s lascivious, sugar-coated home videos made with his brother George and screened alongside friends Kenneth Anger, Jonas Mekasand Andy Warhol in the New York underground film scene of the 1960s and 70s. Experimenting with 8mm film, the twin brothers from the Bronx conjured up their own camp, sexually charged pop fantasies in fleshly shades of violet, turquoise, and sunflower.
Face to Face with Stu Smith. Guests: Mike Kuchar, Eric Smith and Jennifer Kroot.
December 18, 2009
After the Kuchar Bros. screening last Thursday evening (George and Mike Kuchar, Recent Preservations: Pussy on a Hot Tin Roof, Tootsies in Autumn, A Woman Distressed, and Lovers of Eternity) I trapped Mike Kuchar in the back of the catering kitchen, near the walk-in freezer, and conducted this tiny interview with him as part of the ongoing series “5 Questions.” His brother George had recently been asked the same 5 questions for the blog, but Mike’s answers were different. This controlled experiment revealed that twins don’t always think alike.
December 10, 2009
For more clips like this, visit the blog for the NYC cult cable-access show Media Funhouse, located here: www.mediafunhouse.blogspot.com The legendary underground filmmaker talks about how he achieved the look of his most famous film, the cult classic "Sins of the Fleshapoids." This interview was shot at the Anthology Film Archives in New York City on the occasion of a retrospective of Kuchar's latest videos.
December 11, 2009
For more clips like this, visit the blog for the NYC cult cable-access show Media Funhouse, located here: www.mediafunhouse.blogspot.com The legendary underground filmmaker talks about his Hollywood inspirations, in this interview filmed at the Anthology Film Archives.
October 24, 2007
Mike Kuchar has visited Moviate a few times and on his most recent visit, he answered some questions about filmmaking and his hobby (vocation)
December 23, 2005
Sharing a Bronx childhood immersed in movies, twin brothers Mike and George Kuchar developed during the '50s and '60s into two of the most influential underground filmmakers in America ? while still in their teens and early 20s. Possessed by vivid imagination and ribald taste, the brothers were instrumental in giving rise to intentional camp cinema, and did so well before Jack Smith's Flaming Creatures and Susan Sontag's ?Notes on Camp.? And presaging Warhol, they created a factory of their own ? ?Hollywood in the Bronx? ? by using friends and other co-conspirators for their madcap 8mm deconstructions of melodrama, sci-fi, and horror.
ILLUSTRATIONS AND COMICS BY MIKE KUCHAR
“ …and still they come!” by Mike Kuchar (Extract from Gay Heart Throbs #3, 1981), Little Joe #4, 2013.
Shade Rupe, Funeral Party II, 1997
Manscape Magazine, 1980’s
First Hand Magazine, 1980’s
Gay Heart Throbs, 1979, 1981
Meatmen, 1970’s