GAYLETTER

GAYLETTER

'Relationships' by Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker

Last call for the Whitney Biennial

Everything worth seeing at the exhibition.

Are you staying in town this weekend? If yes, then you are in luck because the Whitney Biennial is up until Sunday, May 25th. This year the Biennial took “a bold new form as three curators from outside the Museum — Stuart Comer (Chief Curator of Media and Performance Art at MoMA), Anthony Elms (Associate Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia), and Michelle Grabner (artist and Professor in the Painting and Drawing Department at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago) — each oversaw one floor, representing a range of geographic vantages and curatorial methodologies.”

 

We went the opening week and still remember some of the works, well the ones that stood out to us. Here’s a taste of what we liked: Gary Indiana‘s grid of images and LED curtain. The grid is filled with photos of delicious men and their bodies, you even get to see penises.

 

Gary Indiana, Untitled (stanley Park), 2014. LED curtain, twenty-nine chromogenic prints and video, color, silent, 23:39 min. 

 

 

I dreamt about the following piece (below) by Steve Reinke with Jessie Mott, maybe because it had a religious reference and that stuff just scares me.

 

Steve Reinke with Jessie Mott, Rib Gets In the Way (Final Thoughts, Series Three), 2014. Digital video, color, sound; 53 min. 

 

We stumbled onto a pile of suitcases filled with resin by Valerie Snobeck and Catherine Sullivan, they were very memorable.

 


Elijah Burgher‘s drawing of naked men were simply intriguing. They looked like straight men ready to have sex with each other.

 

Elijah Burgher, Beacon to beacon (for R. Hawkins), 2014. Colored pencil on paper.

 

One of the most memorable pieces from this year’s Biennial is the Ken Lum‘s large piece titled ‘Midway Shopping Plaza‘ an amalgam of signs from a fictitious shopping mall. The names are taken from people and events associated with the Vietnam war.

 

 

 

Bjarne Melgaard’s work is everything. Large Penises, nice vaginas, comfy couches, TV displays, color and then some. “Melgaard intends for his installation to communicate the effects of what some scientists call the Anthropocene, a new geological age created by human activity, especially through global warming.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


One of the most inspiring pieces was called ‘Relationships‘ (below) recording the transitions of Rhys Ernst and Zackary Drucker, one MTF and the other FTM. “The photographs of their journey has put queer conscienceless in the forefront of the public eye.”

 


Bye, bye. Enjoy the show and have a wonderful holiday weekend.