In the role of the chef Paul McCarthy

The Bossy Burger video is part of a performative installation. Shot in one night in a set conceived for an exhibition space at the Rosamund Felsen gallery in Los Angeles, set up in a hurry in two days, before being broadcasted on monitors in the device resulting from McCarthy's intervention.

Bossy Burger references the décor of an American television series from the 60s called Family Affairs, in which teenagers find themselves in a burger joint. There, Paul McCarthy wears the costume of the chef, white blouse and chef's hat with red apron and shoes to prepare a meal that becomes a mess. Face covered by a grotesque mask, with puffy cheeks and a toothless smile, depicting the icon Alfred E Neuman of the satirical magazine Mad, that caricaturized the youth of the 60s, he subverts all the elements on set, from utensils to culinary products. The kitchen table becomes a vanity desk, where the abundance of food rots throughout the course of this performative installation, the elements having been left as is after the shoot. All the while mumbling inaudible things, McCarthy spills ketchup all over the space, transforming into a bloody brute. In this staging of excess, he generates disgust in response to overabundance.

In a comic of repetition, this extreme chef pushes the space's swinging doors, creating a parallel between the hamburger stand and a saloon straight out of a western. But this saloon is a space of repression that ends up striking back as the doors spank the cook and open onto a dark abyss, revealing that the world is contained solely within the kitchen.

Patricia Maincent
Translated by Mia Stern, 2021