Banana

Turk is best known for his appropriation of the identities and imagery of legendary artists and cultural figures. Throughout his career, he’s posed as, amongst other people, Che Guevara, Jacques-Louis David, Rene Magritte, Alighiero e Boetti, Sid Vicious, and Elvis – incorporating their legacies into his own celebrity art brand; which is akin to a no-name logo, an empty template advocating the possibility for originality in an era defined by media simulation and cultural exhaustion. Turk has often paid tribute to Andy Warhol, the godfather of consumer-orientated art, through his self-portraits dressed as Warhol, and his recreations of Warhol’s Elvis and Disasters screen prints. Turk’s Banana was made in reference to Warhol’s iconic album cover design for The Velvet Underground and Nico, which featured a sticker of a yellow banana that revealed a pornographically suggestive image of a pink banana when peeled off. Turk’s Banana is an outline, a stripped bare symbol encapsulating Pop as a kind of spiritual void, its intensely kitsch yellow reminiscent of grocery stores, sex clubs and a deflated egg balloon.