“A lot of people will sit down and watch the Oscar show this Sunday and then go and indulge in cocaine.”
Street artist Plastic Jesus was just stating a simple truth when he said this to the New York Daily News, but his new sculpture, which makes the same statement, turns the words into a powerful commentary on celebrity culture.
Thursday morning, an Oscar statue bending down on all fours appeared on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The statue, titled “Hollywood’s Best Party,” was snorting cocaine with a $100 bill, using an American Excess card to divide it into two lines. He took it down by 2 PM after someone complained, saying, “I didn’t want a confrontation. The piece is out there. People have posted it. It got enough publicity to get people to think.”
The statue highlights how drug addiction is either glamorized or ignored by Hollywood elite. “The piece is really just to show how much a part of everyday life for people cocaine is,” the artist said. “In the current war on drugs, this isn’t working. The term controlled substance is an absolutely joke. There is absolutely no control.”
In tragic news that underscores the artist’s point, Parks and Recreation producer and comedian Harris Wittels was found dead on Thursday from a possible drug overdose.
Plastic Jesus has brought attention to this issue before. Upon actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s death, the artist erected an Oscar statue injecting heroin to suggest how drug addiction is too-common affliction that is overlooked in our culture until and unless it affects a celebrity.
(Photo: Plastic Jesus)
