C’mon Bravo, you’re killin’ us here. It seems like all our favorites are being sent home, from Leon Lim (whom we shall remember as "the talented one") to the Sucklord (we'd call him "the entertaining part") leaving little to look forward to in future episodes. And now Michelle?! Well, at least they opened last night's episode with Dusty in short shorts, Sun Young’s promised reward for winning the last challenge.
This week’s challenge: make a work of art out of the innards of a Fiat 500, a beautiful vehicle Bravo didn’t think twice for scrapping for reality TV purposes. “Ze automobile has been an inspirrraaaattttion to artists since they were invented!” Swiss mentor to reality TV stars Simon de Pury croons. Well, that’s all well in good for Richard Prince, but we can only imagine the contestants spent their tortured high school days moping around the art studio, not rubbing elbows with the proletariat who spent their days welding in shop class. “I’m a painterrrrrr” Sarah J whines. Is she ready to burst into tears? Also, Young Sun shares us a telling nugget from his childhood: “My favorite car when I was a kid was a limousine because someone else was driving you.” Is the dark shadow of a storm of frustration looming on the horizon? Let’s get down to it!
THE WINNERS
It was a double Sarah winner’s circle this week as Sarah K and Sarah J landed in the top two. After skinning her elusive prey — that is, after peeling the exterior off of the Fiat driver and passenger seat — Sarah K produced a quite striking Rorschach-like piece of two black beetle shaped pieces of leather splayed on canvas, drawing from childhood road trips with her father. Sarah J’s “muffler of solitude,” as Bill Powers so cleverly put it, an exhaust of pipe streaming a floral-arrangement-like white plume as if it were coming out of the back of Superman’s car, took home the winning title.
THE LOSERS
WTF THEY SENT MICHELLE HOME? Yes, her “Scenic Overlook,” a shiny red fender adorned with eyes and lips, looked like a character in a Pixar movie, but we thought our death-obsessed darling had it in her to make it to the end. And so did the judges. Jerry Saltz, reminds her of the fact that she herself was in a car accident, an experience she could’ve well drawn from (uh, you mean the one where she almost DIED?), while other judges offered less poignant (or caustically insensitive) words. “It’s not stupid enough,” Powers critiques. “Just puttin’ googly eyes on something isn’t gonna cut it.” Pffff. Kymia’s “Key to the Universe,” a black box meant to sparkle inside with the stardust produced when you grind a key into powder, well, didn’t. Sparkle, that is. And…
THIS EPISODE’S DELIGHTFUL NONSENSICAL TITLE BY LOLA
Her work this time around was called “The Car is a Cave and My Fingertips are Gods Controlling Your Fate.” Unfortunately, the judges did not like this one. Saltz laments that it has her "repeating the same steps” (but didn’t he like these "same steps" so much in "Inferior Arms Hobble Rebels in Libya War"?). The piece was another one of Lola's uncontrolled emotional projectile regurgitations on the wall, consisting of some disparate pieces (a self portrait, and some car parts that looked as if they were painted with particularly glittery shades of OPI) that exhausted the judges' patience. “If you’re going to make mistakes, let’s start making some new ones. Let’s not have this conversation again, ok?” ZING for Powers! Good one! As Lola starts to tear up, is that a smirk Kymia’s trying to suppress? Oh well, at least leaving these two in the game will keep us watching, just in hopes of seeing them cat fight.
POWERSISM OF THE WEEK
Shockingly, our Powersism is brought to you by guest judge and automotive expert (*giggles*) Liz Cohen. “There’s no big bang in that universe,” she says of Kymia’s piece. Powersism must be contagious.