Dash Snow’s Prophetic Polaroids of American Decadence

Just 27 on the time of his dying, Dash Snow minimize a dashing silhouette on the vanguard of the East Village artwork scene in fin de siècle New York. Hailing from the de Menil household, he deserted the trimmings of luxurious for the road, becoming a member of the legendary IRAK graffiti crew. As the Nineties gave method to the 2000s, Snow pinballed round city with the easy aptitude of a self-styled enfant horrible, blazing a singular path throughout pictures, collage, zine making, and sculpture.  

Polaroid digicam in hand, Snow noticed all of it, crafting hypnotic pictures of New York on the daybreak of a courageous new world he wouldn’t reside to see. Here, the artist is actor, collaborator and provocateur, hanging a steadiness between public determine and enigma within the spirit of Marcel Duchamp and Andy Warhol. Snow famously posed for Dave Schubert in a bath stuffed together with his Polaroids, each image containing a narrative as delectable because the picture itself. His images stand as artefacts of a disappearing New York, a poetry of individuals and place the place the visceral thrills of intercourse, medicine and violence turn into a gateway into the infinite cycle of life, dying and rebirth.  

With Dash Snow: Carrion, the inaugural exhibition at Morán Morán in Paris, curator Jeppe Ugelvig brings collectively practically 50 Polaroid images that situate the artist within the lengthy arc of historical past. Taking its title from Charles Baudelaire’s 1857 poem, Une Chargone (A Carcass), Carrion is a examine within the intoxicating pleasures of decadence seen by means of the eyes of a star born to infinite evening.  

“This was the time of grunge, of Chloë Sevigny and films like Kids that shows this dirty, crumbling last bastion of Manhattan before it was developed and sanitised,” says Ugelvig. “There is that moment where Dash, Ryan McGinley and Dan Colen are on the cover of New York magazine [Warhol’s Children, 5 January 2007] as these creative babies who have a foot in art but are largely cult famous because of their street cred. That is something the art world wasn’t ready for, and he remained a divisive name in his life despite the support of people like Jeffrey Deitch. Even after his passing, the art world wouldn’t give Dash the legitimacy he deserved because he was too hot. His name was too resonant in other spheres.”  

With the passage of time, Snow’s life and work could be seen inside the lengthy continuum of artwork historical past whereas prefiguring the current day. Alongside photographers Brassaï, André Kertész, August Sander, and Eugène Atget, who mapped the semiotics of contemporary life because it performed out on the town streets, Snow held the Polaroid digicam like a twig can, discovering the spot and marking it as his. “It was a new age of America in decline,” says Ugelvig. “Dash’s take was not a countercultural response to the middle class; it was a take on the decay of American society, the decline of great cities, and how one navigates that space.” 

Looking by means of 1000’s of Polaroids within the archive, Ugelvig noticed the world because it unfolded earlier than Snow, and the methods wherein the digicam may turn into an extension of his character and persona. “Since Dash’s death, we’ve become used to this double position; and in the age of social media, artists today almost have to have a larger dominion than just making art objects,” Ugelvig says. This was Snow’s secret sauce: genuine, speedy and uncooked – the id unleashed with debauched flourish. Here, there may be naked flesh, be it Jade Berreau pregnant with their child Secret and luxuriating within the fantastical scraps of Nest (2007), or a topless Ryan McGinley, vomiting into a bathroom. 

“Dash had a flow of images produced running around on nights out or around the house that would often end up in a magazine,” says Ugelvig. “There was the myth of unfiltered youth culture that was similar to the Warhol economy of an earlier period in New York, where you have this particularly brilliant, intense, and iconic social world which is in the business of depicting itself and disseminating images of itself. It’s a powerful tactic we’ve all become accustomed to today.” 

Like Jean-Michel Basquiat, who would additionally cross at 27 after setting the New York artwork world aflame, Snow understood that myth-making was an integral a part of the work. At the identical time, it was a double-edged sword that might minimize each methods. “My mission is to distil Dash’s legacy from the social lore that held it hostage,” he says. “He anticipated a media landscape dominated by seemingly instant and authentic imagery that is nonetheless hyper-staged, hyper-stylised, and very carefully curated. This is something  Dash was aware of and attuned to 20 years ago – a mode of visual culture that has now become completely ubiquitous.”  

Dash Snow: Carrion is on present at Morán Morán in Paris till 29 November 2025.