Introducing Mr. Diana1996

FROM THE NAKED EYE CINEMA - INTRODUCING MR. DIANA, a video short documenting the arrival of controversial comic book artist and illustrator Michael Diana–the hottest astral flame to scorch New York City's creative underbelly–to New York City. Facing obscenity charges in Florida, he has already done time there for his shocking and outrageously funny pictorial observations. His stellar popularity in the underground realm of ribald iconiclasm has made him a current target of authoritative 'zine'-o-phobia. In his art he exposes the hypocrisy of common atrocities committed in the name of Traditional Values: those of Family, Church, and Nation; Ideas that he gets straight from TV news. Mike's soft spoken, gentle character is in sharp contrast to the harsh images of bloody sexuality he creates. His persona combines the raw innocence of Melvile's Billy Budd with the lusty ingenuousness of Voltaire's Candide. The video features the "three faces of Mike": Artist, Political Scapegoat, and Object Of Desire. Explore the territory "Inside Michael Diana", as the film makers survey his surfer-buff physique. He stands poised amidst the jumble of severed limbs, human genitalia, and visceral secretions of his own creation. The video also features an appearance by Martha Wilson, whose sexually explicit exhibition and performance curatorial of the past twelve years made her alternative space Franklin Furnace a front-runner in challenging today's harshly vindictive climate of censorship in public art funding, production, and presentation.