Cody Critcheloe, formerly known as SSION (pronounced shun), is a multifaceted audiovisual artist embodying video directing, music production, live performance, and painting. The artist has released several records and has collaborated with Róisín Murphy, Sky Ferreira, Ariel Pink, and Hood By Air. His recent venture as an award-nominated music video director includes working on videos for Robyn, Perfume Genius, Yves Tumor, Santigold, and Katseye, and has exhibited artwork internationally. SSION is used as a moniker for Critcheloe's multimedia practice and was retired in the early 2020s. He lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
Early life and education
Critcheloe was born and raised in Lewisport, Kentucky. His mother was a draftsman and his father worked as a maintenance manager at a paper mill. In high school, Critcheloe formed a punk rock band named SSION and released albums under this moniker until their last studio album, O, in 2018.
After high school, the artist relocated to Kansas City, Missouri for college, where he studied fine art at the Kansas City Art Institute and graduated with a BFA. SSION was resurrected alongside three other visual artists.
The artist's visual practice continued. He created album artwork for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs's "Fever to Tell" and music videos for the likes of Liars and Peaches along with stop-motion animated videos for SSION's music.
Music
In 2003, SSION released the EP Minor Treat and the album Opportunity Bless My Soul.
SSION released their second album, Fools Gold, accompanied with a remix EP Clown, in 2008. The album achieved critical success and straddles several genres like disco, house, and electro-punk. SSION's voice has been linked to late-1990s incarnation of Royal Trux'sNeil Hagerty and Darby Crash. On Pitchfork, critic Eric Harvey writes:
"Ssion's tendency to weave sympathy and encouragement through the naughty bits-- erasing the boring distinctions between partying, sex, music, and boundless, delirious dreaming-- clearly aligns them with CSS, Scissor Sisters, and Junior Senior, their fellow purveyors of devilishly simple, self-reflexive, and undeniably catchy dance-pop."
In 2011, SSION self-released the electropop and disco-influenced, Bent, his third album. It was eventually re-released in 2012. The release of the album coincided with a 3-day performance at MoMA PS1 with Sky Ferreira, Mykki Blanco, Colin Self and Casey Spooner.
"In 2018, so many new artists are embracing their queer identities and heritage, but Critcheloe has spent about 20 years honing Ssion's droll, campy, dramatic aesthetic—and that work has paid off in their strongest and most timely album yet. "O" is the sound of the zeitgeist catching up with Ssion, not the other way around."
The artist's first feature film, Boy, was released in 2009 and funded by Grand Arts, a non-profit arts organization from Kansas City, MO. The film was showcased alongside artwork and installations in tandem with Peres Project in LA and Berlin, The Smart Museum in Chicago, and The Hole Gallery in New York City. Boy is made up of music videos strung together to produce what Critcheloe jokingly calls "the gay punk rock equivalent to Forrest Gump."
In 2020, SSION directed the music video for Yves Tumor's Kerosene! featuring Tumor, Diana Gordon, Bailey Stiles and Chris Greatti in a Cronenberg-inspired drama. Later that year, Critcheloe directed a Versace Christmas advertisement special called All for You starring comedian Jordan Firstman and Donatella Versace.
The LA-based pop star group, Katsye, have worked with Critcheloe on several music videos, including "Gnarly," "Animals," and "Touch."
Critcheloe has been drawing and painting since childhood. His paintings typically reach for punk and Hollywood entertainment business lowbrow iconography and logomania.
In 2020, SSION exhibited a new series of painting in the exhibition titled Chips, the artist's first painting exhibition since the 2000's. Chips cataloged in storyboard-form painted photographs and stills from both completed and unrealized videos directed by the artist. In addition to the artist's own visuals, he included stills from VHS-era source material like David Cronenberg'sCrash, Pedro Almodóvar'sLa Ley Del Deseo, and the American television show Seinfeld. The exhibition included 37 paintings hung salon-style at The Gallery @. Author and critic Natasha Stagg writes that Critcheloe's paintings merge abstraction with melodrama and punk rock, blurring the lines between figurative identity and symbolic idolatry.
