A Life In Tiny Placards

100% Trash (Mixed Media, 2009)
Ryan Fitzgerald and Brendan Hill

Fitting with his stated mission of wanting to "poop in...everyone's...mouth," 100% Trash explores Fitzgerald's varied and lifelong fascination with the insatiable consumer and the inevitable result of his consumption: refuse. "The detritus we shed is more clearly indicative of who we are, socially, morally -- more intellectually honest about the self we inhabit than if we were to compose something with any consideration of style or forethought," frequent collaborator and noted thugonomicist Brendan Hill was quoted as saying in The Schooner Review.

Possibly originally titled An Happy Accident, suggestive of a smiling toddler, sitting proud in the bloated fecundity of his diaper, this pastiche (with materials as diverse as nonsense and falderal) is part of the "lazy and untalented" school that rose to prominence in the early 21st century. Combining a cultivated lack of ambition with the anarchic disinterest more commonly found in the glassy-eyed scrawlings of alcoholic mongoloids, 100% Trash is best understood as a culmination of Fitzgerald's callow period, also noted for works such as the conceptual piece, Playing Grand Theft Auto While Unemployed For Two Months. Unveiled as the centerpiece of the infamous "Saloon des refuses," the artist added to his reputation as a clear leader of the avant-garde by explaining his masterwork only in finger guns and mouth explosions.

While its intricacies continue to provoke debate among critics and scholars alike, the question of why it took more than one person to make this piece of shit is perhaps best left to history.