Richard Whitehurst is a Columbus, Ohio based artist who is set to unveil his new exhibition entitled, The Rape Tunnel. This dude needs to catch a swift groin kick for letting his artistic freedom make him think he can get so out of pocket. Sure, we’re chauvinists around these parts, but treating the threat of rape the same as the threat of rain is just wrong. Pardon the seriousness, I promise to have you back to your regularly scheduled debauchery soon.
The artist plans to place himself in a room, the only entrance or exit being a 22 ft long plywood tunnel constructed by Whitehurst himself. Then he says that for the duration of the gallery’s opening (from 7:00 p.m. to midnight) he will rape anyone who travels through the tunnel into that room.
Surely this has to be some kind of metaphor, right? Nope, this dude has gone off the deep end with no hope of a Wendy Peffercorn rescue.
In the 4D Gallery main room, I’ve constructed a 22 ft tunnel out of plywood that leads into the project room. There is no way in or out of the project room except for this tunnel. As you travel through the tunnel, it gets smaller and smaller, making it so that you have to crawl and put yourself in a submissive position in order to reach the tunnel’s destination. At the end of the tunnel the subject will find me waiting in the project room and I’ll try to the best of my ability to overpower and rape the person who crawls through.
I had my first breakthrough with an installation that was to be the prototype for this current one. It was called THE PUNCH-YOU-IN-THE-FACE TUNNEL. It was the same set-up as THE RAPE TUNNEL except at the end of the tunnel I’d punch the subject in the face instead of raping him or her. The impetus was completely reactionary to the current state of art, and motivated by pure frustration. As it turns out, I ended up breaking the nose of the third person to crawl through the tunnel, an aspiring model. She went to the hospital and eventually sued me. Her modeling career was put on hold.
It’s official, this dude definitely has to return some videotapes. Here’s hoping that someone visits the Colt .45 tunnel before entering this dickhead’s “artistic vision.”
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