EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: Oregon Building Owner Removes Trump Beheading Image, “Art Can Be Offensive, But This Crossed The Line”

 

The owner of Total Performance Converters, which rents space to One Grand Gallery in downtown Portland, Oregon, says he was furious about the image of an ISIS-style beheading of President Trump being displayed on the front window of his building.

I spoke with the building owner today, Mark, a veteran that fought for our country, who told me he’s just ready to get back to work. Mark said that although he owns the building, he rents the space downstairs to One Grand Gallery. For 35 years he’s been selling re-manufactured torque converters for lift trucks above the gallery and is not interested in all of the attention that the gory artwork has created.

Mark said the image on the window went up at some point on Friday, in preparation for the exhibit’s opening reception to take place later that night. Having been off for the weekend, Mark didn’t see the image again until he went in to work this past Monday. He said as soon as he saw it, he went to call the One Grand Gallery owner to ask him to remove it.

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“The minute I saw it, I started trying to remove the F*ck Trump written on the bottom and immediately called the gallery owner and told him this had to come down.” He added, “Art can be offensive, but this crossed the line.”

Mark explained that he leases the space out each month to the gallery, who then in turn, sublets to artists wanting to display their artwork in the different exhibits featured in the rented space. According to the One Grand Gallery website, the art gallery was founded by Jordan Chan-Mendez in 2012.

After Mark’s phone call, the gallery owner came down and removed the rest of the image from the front window. Images of the president being decapitated could be seen on t-shirts hanging inside the gallery, along with other shirts and artwork with similar anti-Trump themes from other artists. The entire exhibit was removed by Tuesday by the gallery owner.

The piece that was displayed in the front window of the building depicted an ISIS-style beheading of President Trump and was created by an artist known as Compton Creep. One look at Compton Creep’s website tells you all you need to know about the soul behind the artist.

Under the heading “ART” you’ll find images of naked women engaged in explicit sexual acts with decapitated goat heads, horned women and angels shown in bondage and various submissive poses, and even one piece, named “Maternal”, that shows a woman cutting open her own abdomen and the baby playing in the blood.

These pieces of “artwork” contain a few common themes: Satanism, blood, the domination of women, snakes and knives.

I asked Mark if he had received threats, to which he responded that there were hundreds of voicemails that had been left on the business answering machine, and that yes, some were violent threats, but that he did not fear for his safety.

Mark told me that he even received a call from someone saying that a demolition crew was going to come out the next morning and bulldoze the building. “Of course, none of these people making threats leave their name,” he said.

“A lot of this anger is misdirected,” he said. “Although we own the building, we have nothing to do with the art displayed in the exhibits.”

The building’s owner, Mark, told me that he just wants to get back to his regular life. “I work hard, I have a wife and kids, and I like to go fishing.” He continued, “We didn’t ask for all of this.”