Greased

In his solo exhibition Greased Tyler Stoll asks the question: What if the timeless 1978 musical film was reshot, but the role of Danny Zuko was played by a homemade cardboard cutout of John Travolta that slowly disintegrates throughout the film, leaving behind only a pile of pulp?

Incorporating sculpture, video, and performance, Stoll (and friends) revive the iconic leather-clad heartbreaker to test the durability of normative, nostalgic masculinities, while offering dissolution as an alternate emancipatory narrative.

The work is part of a larger project that revolves around a manifesto Stoll is writing, titled the future is flaccid, which develops the material conditions and formal qualities of flaccidity as a tool to undermine the phallus and the systems of domination it upholds.

Well Well Projects | Portland, OR | Aug 2023

Documentation by Fio Ballerini