Dead Soldiers
Christopher Cascio's paraphernalia collection
In The Wire, the junkie police-informant Bubbles describes the trash left behind by drug addicts as “dead soldiers” (which was also the name of the third episode of the third season). Christopher Cascio has a little experience with dead soldiers, but unlike the messy junkies of The Wire, Cascio saved his paraphernalia—pipes, filters, lighters, and especially the little ziplock bags that dealers used to package the drugs. Later, as an art student getting his MFA at the University of Houston, he decided that his collection of drugg baggies could be recycled into art. He scanned the drug baggies and then printed them out on the large printer in the UH art department. He showed this work about ten years ago at Cardoza Fine Art and at his MFA exhibition, and I took a few of them to the Pan Art Fair that I did in the Belmont Hotel in 2013. Then they were put them away.
Cascio pulled them out of storage and put them up for one more showing with Pablo Cardoza Gallery. The show is titled Dead Soldiers. Cascio is the tall guy with long hair in the photo above. (Painter Paul Kremer is wearing the green jacket in the foreground.)
Turning drug baggie into art is not a unique idea, but Cascio’s twist is that he took the drugs himself. His work while he was getting his MFA was soaked in his former bad habits. (I say “former,” but honestly, I have no idea.) Ironically, I just read Will Self’s introduction to the Penguin Classics edition of Junky by William S. Burroughs. Self, like Cascio, writes from knowledge—Self was a teenaged heroin addict. Self writes, “Burrough’s Junky becomes the very archetype of the romanticisation of excess that has so typified our era.” That sentence could describe this exhibit. Despite its reference to The Wire (which definitely did not romanticise drug taking), these blown up photos look cool. Drugs are cool. Message recieved.
When I see these, I have many questions. First, who prints that stuff on the baggies? What is the point of it? Are the drugs in the “Heavy D” bags different in any way from those in the “Stay High” bags? Are they actually brands that signify a different manufacturer? And most of all, why did Cascio save them? Is he just an inveterate collector or hoarder? So much so that even while addicted to drugs, he can’t throw obvious garbage away?
The exhibit was mostly these photographic images, but there was also a shelf full of old drug paraphernalia.
This pile of paraphernalia reminded me of an elementary school visit from a narcotics cop where he showed us various pieces of paraphernalia I don’t know if they still have these cop-scaring-kids visits to schools, but they were a universal part of childhood for people my age.
Cascio’s work started out focused on obsessions like drugs, but also weird drug, sex, and musical equipment ads from weird old magazines. But he has evolved as an artist quite a bit—including intense fluorescent paintings and currently, wall pieces made out of random pieces of fabric quilted together as abstractions. But it’s nice to be reminded of where he started.
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