Special Performance: Zebadiah Keneally

Zebadiah Keneally
Lunch is Very Important: All the Secrets to Life You Never Knew You Knew

September 13, 2-5pm
October 9, 6-8pm

Mixed Greens is pleased to present Zebadiah Keneally’s performance Lunch is Very Important: All the Secrets to Life You Never Knew You Knewwith the gallery. Please join us on Saturday, September 13, 2-5pm and Thursday, October 9, 6-8pm as Keneally will "read your fortune."

"Zebadiah Keneally is a performance and conceptual artist who operates under the guise of Hamburger Vampire. In Keneally's most recent performances, he uses the prop of a handmade deck of cards as the conduit to administer interactive psychic readings. Spreading several of these cards across a table, some bearing captions such as Friends and others with simple line drawings of geo-political borders, Keneally will generate a mystic prophecy in his performances. These prophecies are fueled by the underlying associations made by his participants, guided by this part-guru, part all-American salesman, played by the artist.

Keneally's fortune telling practice offers advice regarding love, life, money, and the general surrealistic quandaries of enlightened or intoxicated individuals. Given all the comparisons that one could make, for example a magic 8-ball, the I-Ching, the Tarot tradition; Keneally's readings offer a unique perspective, without the expected symbolism of wizards, elements or ask again laters. Keneally illustrates a much more current set of archetypes, which feel closer to home; ultimately these fortune tellings feel comically dualistic and the original drawing contained in the cards, optimistically critical.

Acts of fortune telling, and the faux-spiritualist performances of Hamburger Vampire are described by Keneally as being akin to the con-artist lifestyle of a "snake-oil salesman...the evil entrepreneur." These performative fortune tellings, especially when offered by Hamburger Vampire himself, pose the hyperbolic caricature of a scammy street-mystic, and similar to other works by Keneally, the emphasis is on great value. The general tone of these readings is best categorized as an expression of wit. The joke is on the sordid nature of business transactions and the uncanny resemblance of spiritual guidance and advertising."

Written by Anthony Tino, Publisher at Endless Editions.

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