PERFORMANCE ART – TEMPTATIONS IN FAIRYLAND

“Temptations in Fairyland” was a solo performance art commission for the Lancaster Museum of Art & History based on the artist Leonard Greco’s solo exhibition “Fairyland” in MOAH:CEDAR on March 16, 2019.

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The visually delightful artworks installed in Leonard Greco Jr’s “Fairyland” at MOAH: CEDAR are both the basis and setting for the live performance of “Temptations in Fairyland”. In conjunction with the exhibition, multimedia performance artist Jason Jenn presents a short theatrical solo-piece of expressive movement and spoken word.

Weighty tableaus and themes are mixed with flamboyant humor in both Greco and Jenn’s work that playfully flirts with camp sensibility. Inspiration is derived from French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s “The Temptation of St. Anthony”, which depicts the desert hermit’s confrontation one evening with a series of lavish and lustful hallucinatory temptations. Our contemporary world contains equally alluring distractions that reach out to us in powerfully appealing ways on a regular basis. Jenn puts the story into context through the realm of performance art’s own wild history and pantheon of unusual characters.

So with all that in mind, both the performance and exhibition avow to deliver a gratifying pleasurable experience.

“I hadn’t expected such a completely immersive experience – you simply have no choice but to jump onto Jason’s wild speeding train of boundless energy…I giggled between gasping, it was a dizzying, manic performance that delighted me” – review by artist Leonard Greco

Photos by Orit Harpaz

Body paint by Vojislav Radovanović