Stargazing is one of the great American pastimes. The machinery mobilized to gather our stellar sightings-the supermarket tabloids, the swarms of paparazzi, the gossipy gab shows-attests to the scale of our appetite. Celebrities arrive via media filters, contextualized and strategically positioned. Rare is it that we encounter them in the rough. Because celebrities occupy a significant niche in image culture, who better to remark on their import than image makers working outside the cult of personality, media artists the likes of Anne McGuire, Mark Rappaport, Liza Johnson, Jon Moritsugu, Kia Simon, and Joe Gibbons? Shooting Stars is a contrary collection of speculations, deconstructions, and confessions about those not-so-very-obscure objects of desire. Though the works in this three-part series vary from the testily critical to the inane, careful never to exploit or opportunize, let's face it, we're proud of the cavalcade of stars we put in the searing heat of the limelight: Pam Grier, Joe Dimaggio, Courtney Love, Whitney Houston, Patty Hearst, Jeff Koons, Sylvester Stallone, Madonna, Michael Jackson, Jean Seberg...-Steve Seid Wednesday November 26, 1997
