bring the buzzing SoHo scene to a momentary halt.
In the early 1990s, LeKay edited an underground magazine entitled Pig, the name referring to a Nostradamus quatrain about men with pig snouts in flying machines and standing for “Politically Incorrect Geniuses”. The main contributors were artists, including Rachel Harrison, Dennis Oppenheim, Sean Landers, Rikrit Tiravaneja, Fred Tomaselli and Sue Williams, as well as Young British Artists such as Marcus Harvey, Angus Fairhurst and Damien Hirst.
The Native Navigated His Canoe by the Stars and Peacefully Disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle # 2 by John LeKay, 1993, acrylic lacquer on canvas
19901994, he made “pour paintings” out of acrylic lacquer metallic car paint, using a hair dryer on some and putting others on a see-saw, swivel table to turn and tilt the paintings to create different shapes as the paint ran. His inspiration for such works came from looking at a science catalogue’s microscopic slides of viruses, bacteria, AIDS, bubonic plague and cancer, which he described as “quite beautiful under a microscope”. The Watercourse Way by Alan Watts suggested the idea of minimal effort.
In 1991, he exhibited in the group show The Interrupted Life at the New Museum of Contemporary Life, New York, and showed Cryonic Suspension Dewar, a container filled with liquid Nitrogen at -196C, 320F below zero, a temperature which prevents biochemical and metabolic activity. LeKay’s intention was for a collector to buy the piece, in order to be frozen in it, when they died.
Ring a Ring of Roses by John LeKay, 199091, sexual surrogate dolls and masks
19911992, he exhibited at the Feature Gallery and Kenny Schacter Rove Gallery with “sex-pieces”, consisting of copulating blow up sex dolls wearing caricature animal