Forget Guy Fawkes’ endeavors to burn down Parliament; the fifth of November may be better remembered for this risque billboard-sized image unveiled this morning on London Bridge, featuring Brooklyn-based artists Dan Colen and Kalup Linzy kissing in the buff.
Embracing each other in front of the Statue of Liberty, the two male artists say they "feel it is our birthright to love without oppression or racism, things that have historically separated us".
"I think Kalup and I had a synchronised, inspired moment," Colen adds. The image hopes to disrupt familiar issues of identity politics and instead represent romance in its rawest, most rudimentary form.
Once christened the bad boy of the post-Pop New York art scene, Colen once created a life-sized hamster nest of shredded novels and pillows in the foyer of the Mayfair Hotel with Dash Snow. (He was naked there too, but this time he was off his face on booze and drugs.) He's since embraced sobriety and relocated to a farm upstate to produce work – his last piece sold for $3.1 million.
Meanwhile, performance and video artist Linzy is better known for his powerful video polemics which both satirise and pay tribute to TV soap operas. In 2010, he was invited by James Franco to make a cameo on the ABC soap General Hospital.
Kalup and Colen's image will be exhibited for all to see on London Bridge until 20th November, alongside a collaborative photographic edition of 50 prints from both artists.
