Joy Ride to Space AKA: $EE YA $UCKER$
Joy Ride to Space AKA $EE YA $UCKER$
Cast and Fabricated Aluminum, Steel, Mixed Media: 74”x 52”x 36”
In 2021 Jeff Bezos paid roughly $5.5B to take a 4-minute ride into space. A short joy ride on a private spaceship that cost more to fly than 98% of the Nations have in their GDP. Bezos, Elon Musk, and Richard Branson have all dumped billions of dollars to leave planet earth. Looking to further the growth and expansive reach of their fortunes they plan to capitalize space for themselves. The amount of money, resources, and energy that goes into these “joy rides to space” could help ease or even end world problems such as poverty, climate change, food insecurity, etc. These men look to the stars and see dollar signs for themselves. So as the rest of us continue to gaze up from Earth, billionaires who bought their way into space will wave down from gilded perches. The for profit space race is nothing more than a pissing contest with winner becoming even more rich. Private spaceships being phallic symbols of megalomaniac billionaires. Dick moves, made by dickish men, riding their dick shaped rockets, while competing to see whose is bigger.
This sculpture presents a bright blue human skeleton riding atop a polished phallic rocket ship that has launched from a cock’n’balls shaped base. The skeleton sits on a toy horse saddle attached to the rocket as if playing on a rocking horse or mechanical bull. The white cowboy hat held over the skeletons head is an ode to the hat worn by Bezos upon his return from space. This hat came to be seen as a humous & tone-deaf style choice as it was seen as a cultural object reflecting a lineage of capitalism, possession, and colonialization. The blue patina both represents the Blue Origin space company Bezos owns as well as the “blue-blood” privilege these men feel of themselves.