Degenerate Art in the Age of DOGE

Los Angeles, CA – March 22, 2025 – As political forces tighten their grip on cultural institutions, Degenerate Art in the Age of DOGE stands as both a rebellion and a celebration of fearless self-expression. Opening at Durden and Ray on March 22, 2025, this exhibition confronts state-controlled narratives, censorship, and the suppression of creative autonomy.

Drawing from the Trump administration’s intervention in the Kennedy Center and the NEA and evoking the legacy of the Nazi Party’s 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition—used to vilify and silence artists—this show reclaims the term as a symbol of resistance. Featuring a diverse group of contemporary artists, Degenerate Art in the Age of DOGE challenges power structures, disrupts social taboos, and amplifies voices that refuse to conform.

Polly Borland, Joe Davidson, Tom Dunn, and Randi Matushevitz manipulate familiar gestures and shapes, distorting the human form in ways that simultaneously seduce and unsettle. Through photography, Keith Boadwee, Robert Andy Coombs, and Dakota Noot expose the private as public, questioning the norms that dictate how bodies should be seen and used. Likewise, Trulee Hall’s playful yet provocative videos and squeaky mechanisms, with their surreal imagery, blur the line between desire and taboo. Zak Smith’s ink paintings pull us into intimate, behind-the-scenes moments from porn sets and bedrooms, while Dylan Ricard’s vision of a post-Anthropocene world plays out in a close-up video of his mouth and skin, displayed on a Shibari-bound screen. Steven Wolkoff bridges past and present, drawing on historical references like Holocaust book burnings and Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ to confront the ongoing threats to artistic and intellectual freedom.

Spanning painting, sculpture, digital media, and performance, the exhibition delves into themes of gender fluidity, bodily autonomy, and sexual taboos. Degenerate Art in the Age of DOGE is not just a challenge to repression—it is a reclamation of creative freedom in a world that too often demands silence.

Content Warning:
This exhibition contains nudity, depictions of sex acts, and explorations of social taboos. Some works may be provocative or challenging. Viewer discretion is advised.

Artists: Keith Boadwee, Polly Borland, Robert Andy Coombs, Joe Davidson, Tom Dunn, Trulee Hall, Randi Matushevitz, Dakota Noot, Dylan Ricards, Zak Smith, Steven Wolkoff

Curated by: Jenny Hager, Ty Pownall, Steven Wolkoff