irresistible debs

"Every day that I get up and live my life, and thrive, is a protest. When your government wants to make you disappear, simply existing is a political act - a form of resistance!" - Debs

Transformer is honored to celebrate Jersey PRIDE with a new exhibition at our Siren Arts program space in Asbury Park, NJ by acclaimed artist Robert Melee. Melee is renowned for his bold, large-scale installations that investigate the psychology of the everyday. Often incorporating cast-off quotidian items in his work, Melee points to a specific domestic space, one that is derived from familiarity, decoration, and Otherness.

With his multi-media installation irRESISTible Debs at Siren Arts, Melee focuses on Debs, a creative spirit who makes the best of household chores by dressing up, dancing and theatrically painting a room. At the exhibition’s center is Debs Unit, a new multi-media sculpture installation that emulates an entertainment center, and envelops the gallery space’s architecture. The 10 x 10 ft multi-media sculpture or ‘UNIT’ features 7 flat screens of layered frame stills and household collectibles. One monitor shows an opening sequence of Debs outside on a patio, listening to music, busy on their phone and posing for a phantom photographer. Another flatscreen presents Debs inside their bedroom, painting their walls with joyful gestures of their signature. As the evening goes on, garlands appear and garments come off, which is when the action really begins....

Accompanying the multimedia sculpture, is a mural size photo titled, Portrait of Debs, which occupies one of the Siren Arts walls. The photo collage casts kaleidoscopic effects, depicting Debs painting of their room in many different stages. Melee redefines the psychological and classical aspects of portraiture by contrasting the exaggerated and dramatic with the mundane. What begins as a household chore, evolves into an evening of decadence, with Debs minding their own business, lost in music, paint, a drop cloth, and garland.

The exposé of Debs’s private evening-at-home-turned-party is a call for personal and artistic freedom, as well as kindness. The viewer is granted the privilege of being witness to this scene of a tremendously creative, confident human being, in the world they want to inhabit. What they do to themselves, in some of the footage, may be decadent, but who cares? Flamboyant, banal, decadent or provocative; beauty deserves to flourish in safety and love.