Pio Abad: Dazzler

Pio Abad’s sculptures, prints and video work form a milieu of fetish, idolatry and excess wherein the links between militarism and disco and the subversion of disco subculture are explored.

During his final year at The Royal Academy in London, Pio has been looking at the relationship between militarism and disco culture, and how disco as a subculture was co-opted and made ever more grotesque by the neo-conservative movement of the 1970s and 80s. For his solo exhibition - Dazzler - at The Duchy, Pio aims to create an immersive and loaded visual environment, installing a highly detailed digital wallpaper within the main gallery space, as well as sculpture and a video in the gallery’s back room.

Dazzler - the word - references two things, the early form of camouflage which was developed for British warships and its also the name of an effete 1970s superhero, whose main superpower was to be a human disco ball and who regularly comes up in top ten lists of the worst superheroes ever.

Hinting variously at references to Farrah Fawcett, Imelda Marcos and Andy Warhol’s camouflage paintings, Pio’s sinister and political work aims to deride cultural symbols of power within a milieu of fetish, idolatry and excess.

Text supplied by third party.