Having long ago destroyed all boundaries through unremitting pushing, James Franco must now establish his own geographical areas if he is to contain his ever-sprawling works. Hence, the transformation of the formerly quaint, provincial burg of Berlin into the far more exciting Gay Town, an entire city of art of which James Franco is both founder and mayor. Franco broke yet more ground by establishing Gay Town at the Berlin International Film Festival, claiming an unused patch of land in the name of Blowing Minds that he soon settled with brave pioneers in the form of James Franco’s paintings, as well as some cows. (All pioneers need cows.)


According to the press release, Gay Town’s mission statement is to explore “a variety of themes that are central to Franco's artistic practice, mainly issues related to adolescence, public and private persona, stereotypes and other societal concerns such as society's preoccupation with celebrity”—all themes that have already been explored so deeply and repetitively in Franco’s previous work, they have finally created a hole big enough to pour concrete in and form the foundation of an entire town. A Gay Town.

As you can see from the examples below, here in Gay Town, those themes take the form of multimedia collage pieces in which Franco pasts a pair of fake breasts next to a naughty Snow White picture then spraypaints the words “K-Stew” on it—an obvious reference to the tabloid furor over Kristen Stewart’s affair with Snow White And The Huntsman director Rupert Sanders, and the fact that James Franco had a pair of fake breasts he wasn’t using.


There is also a Spider-Man photo on which James Franco has painted the words “Fuck Spidey”—an obvious reference to the unfairly reductive Hollywood machine that sought to typecast him after starring in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy, despite the fact that he has a lot of unique artistic insight he’s seeking to express.


The press release also notes that most of these artworks were done “in hotel rooms, makeshift studios and other temporary locations whilst completing other projects, mainly motion pictures,” thus admonishing that they should not be judged under the usual standards of art, as dictated by narrow-minded types who expect them to be “inherently worth looking at.” Keep such attitudes well within the limits of your parochial, non-Gay Towns.