∆RT.W∆TCH /// Dash Snow - Lost, passed out and fucked-up

Downtown legend Dash Snow has died after overdosing on heroin. He was 27-years-old /// via animalnewyork

The best thing to do after a wild & destructive weekend in Berlin? To concern yourself with someones even more excessive lifestyle! So did I and spent the last couple of days reading about Dash Snow and his work (since there are so many analogies to Basquiats work and life) and totally lost space and time! I always had a thing for this fellow, but after all the articles and blogs I went through I don't even know where to start now! 

To give you a first short overview, let's summarize it beginning with the end: Dash Snow (1981-2009)- who died of an overdose on July 13, stoned and alone at the Lafayette House in the East Village has been taking pictures since he was 11. But it was after a two-year stint in juvenile detention, at age 16, that he turned to the Polaroid camera to shoot the happenings around him. Almost a decade later, this New York artist’s Polaroids — which involve images of bruised faces from street fights, vomiting 20-year-olds hanging over railings, hardcore three-way romps on hotel beds, and young noses vacuuming up cocaine-became his introduction into the art world.



No question, shock is a heavy ingredient in Snow’s pieces, but there is more to his work than fashionable mayhem. His photographs, sculptures, and collages deal specifically with tough questions about surveillance and authority — and often the places where those controls break down.

Snow’s life is about walking the tightrope between social malcontent and art Wunderkind, and that tension comes through in his work — and even his clothes. Among the pieces that Snow plans to show at an exhibition for Agnès B. this winter is the white suit he has been wearing almost every day. “Agnès gave it to me new, so I’m going to take it off and hang it on the wall all dirty,” he says. Like his Polaroids, each of those stains will have a dark story to tell.

For some further read about Dash's life, work and death click here.

I am sure this won't be the last time I am posting about this guy, the master of desaster...!

So long, be safe! 
xo Steph