Friday 05.29.15
Growing Up In The New York Underground: From Glam To Punk
Even if you’re a fan of the present, most of us have a specific era of the past we wish we’d lived in. Often our notions of this era are shaped by an artist who was immersed in the spirit of the times, mingled with its eminent personalities, and somehow managed to bottle its zeitgeist through their paintings, prose, or performances. If you’ve ever thought your golden era was the 70s and 80s in New York City underground, photographer Paul Zone lived the life you wish you had.
As an adolescent, Zone was “that kid,” mobbing through the concrete jungle as boywonder sidekick to the drag queens, rockers, and junkies who defined the moment. Fortunately for us, he always brought his camera. The candid, intimate images he shot as a teenager of some of the most epic personalities of those wild decades are now being released in his new photographic memoir. The fierce folks at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, in association with veteran NYC arts impresarios Tony Zanetta and Kymara Lonergan, are launching the book with an exhibition at their Prince St. location (Prince Street Project Space,127-B Prince Street).
The memoir is called Playground, and the solo exhibition, called Growing Up In The New York Underground: From Glam to Punk features over 70 of Zone’s images of music icons including Debbie Harry, The Ramones, The New York Dolls, T. Rex and KISS, as well as the era’s most memorable artists and scenesters like Patti Smith, Arturo Vega, and James Chance. …
Friday 05.15.15
Art: Interface: Queer Artists Forming Communities through Social Media
This is art show is really a no-brainer for us as it’s curated by Walt Cessna and features pretty much all of our favorite artists. There’s Michael Bilsborough, Bubi Canal, Walt Cassidy, Jordan Eagles, Alesia, Exum, Benjamin Fredrickson, Leo Herrera, Brian Kenny, Naruki Kukita, Scooter LaForge, Brett Lindell, Slava Mogutin, Diego Montoya, Gio Black Peter and many more. The exhibition “is emblematic of a shifting time in the art world where technology allows artists to not only create in a different way, but also alters the way the public encounters them and their art.” All the artists in the show, according to the gallery notes, “became friends and colleagues through social media.” I would venture to say that is not completely true as I know for a fact that many of these artists knew each other way before Facebook and Instagram appeared on the scene, but whatever it sounds good in a press release. Their should be plenty of cute boys at this event (I mean with Gio, Slava and Naruki involved that’s guaranteed), and with performances by BoyWolf and music by DJ Sheba Legend, it promises to be more lively than your average art opening. So scrub up pretty k?
Benjamin Fredrickson, Self-Portrait with Cameras, Polaroid. Courtesy of the artist & Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.Benjamin Fredrickson, Self-Portrait with Cameras, Polaroid. Courtesy of the artist & Daniel Cooney Fine Art, New York.
Thursday 05.14.15
Interface
Walt Cessna, curator of Interface, sits down with us at the Leslie Lohman Museum to talk art and politics in the 21st century moment.
Walking through the shops and outdoor cafes of SoHo on a spring day can be soul crushing, and overcoming the desire to snuff out your cigarette in that snatched blonde’s $35 plate of truffle fries can take tremendous focus. Surrounded by people whose level of wealth is eclipsed only by their level of Basic, you feel the loss of the vital art that once thrived and then died here, the ghost of which now stares at you blankly from the glittering sockets of a limited edition Damien Hirst skull.
If you’ve ever felt this way, head to the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art on Wooster Street to see curator Walt Cessna‘s show, “Interface: Queer Artists Forming Communities Through Social Media.” There is still a living heart buried in SoHo, and on a day when the New York Times is announcing Chrystie’s first “Billion Dollar Art Sales Week,” signifying everything that is wrong with the art world, “Interface” at the Leslie Lohman is a sexy and fascinating exploration of what’s right with it.
Photographer/club kid/former fashion terrorist Cessna has gathered a truly heterogenous group of “mostly New York-based artists with active studio practices” who all “have (or have had) active relationships with social media” in an effort “to understand how this truly 21st century confection could create community and bring success to these artists.” What emerges is a titillating and uplifting picture of the 21st century working artist: entrepreneurs who can tap into the queer potential of a democratized online world to display their work, interact with fans and markets, and connect to each other outside the tyranny of galleries who must cater to the über rich. …
Dietmar Busse, Michael Bilsborough, 2014, Gelatin silver print with ink. Courtesy of the artist.
Wednesday 05.13.15
Art: Zanele Muholi – Isibonelo/Evidence
Zanele Muholi calls herself a visual activist. Her photography, video and instillation exhibit, Isibonelo/Evidence, the first major museum show of it’s magnitude in the United States or elsewhere, powerfully and undeniably explores, celebrates and promotes visibility for the black, lesbian and transgender communities of South Africa. Patrick, Abi and I descended on the show’s opening day, to interview and photograph Zanele for an in-depth profile. She proved to be a razor sharp tour de force as she lead us step-by-step through the show, so generous with her time and spirit, extremely knowledgeable about the LGBTQI history of South Africa and it’s context in the global community. The first thing she said to break the ice when we met was,“You’re so gay!” Loved it. Best known for her striking series of black and white portraits of black lesbians and trans men called “Faces + Phases” (shown in it’s entirety in print and slide show format), it’s a series “which uses firsthand accounts to speak to the experience of living in a country that constitutionally protects the rights of LGBTQI people but often fails to defend them from targeted violence.” Hence the wall of copy adjacent to the portraits that tracks the incessant hate crimes that transpired against the LGBTQI community. On a more celebratory note, the next room houses a series of colorful and joyous images of gay and lesbian weddings from Zanele’s inner circle in addition to a video of the artist making love to her lover, totally out of focus, but with the soundtrack totally intact. This exhibition is housed just one floor below Kehinde Wiley’s retrospective “A New Republic” and across the hall from Basquiat’s “The Unknown Notebooks.” It could not be in better company nor provide a more poignant environment for such revolutionary and important work.
Wednesday 05.06.15
The Sexual Underground of the Meatpacking District before Gentrification
I started “going out” — but OUT when I was 16 was in 1979 when the blood ran thick and cold in the streets of the Meatpacking district and you didn’t want to linger on a steamy summer day, the stench would gag you. But, oh the nights, any season, were truly magical, all the most exciting bars and clubs were there, something for everyone: The Anvil, The Mineshaft, The Lure and even a place I dared to go in called Hellfire. I hadn’t thought about those places in ages until I happened upon this extraordinary show of black and white documentary photographs of the era called, “A Buried Past, Forgotten Stories: The Sexual Underground of the Meatpacking District before Gentrification — The Photographs of Efrain John Gonzalez,” (now on view at the visionary bookstore, gallery and performance space BGSQD in the LGBT Center) I found a succinct quote about Efrain that might clue you into the aesthetic push and content of his photographs: “An internationally published photographer who for the past 30 years has been seeking real life images that tells a story of people finding the paths to their souls, finding their bliss with piercing, branding, cuttings, tattoos, implants, leather and a whole lot of radical sex and sexuality.”
You can’t help but feel a bit like a voyeur peering at these intimate images of the meatpacking district, the streets, the clubs and all the crazy kinky sex people were having in them. …
Friday 05.01.15
Art: THE NEW WHITNEY OPENS TO THE PUBLIC
Today the new incarnation of the Whitney Museum of American Art opens downtown to the public, in a Renzo Piano designed building on Gansevoort st. The opening brings one of the city’s major art institutions downtown, into a neighborhood thoroughly changed from a time when the blood of slaughtered meat ran through its cobblestoned streets. The museum’s inaugural exhibition, “America is Hard to See,” follows a roughly chronological path through American history, with works entirely drawn from the Whitney’s permanent collection. The building is clearly feeling itself, as works by Donald Moffett, Claes Oldenburg, and Félix González-Torres, as well as a temporary exhibition on the 5th floor terrace by Mary Heilmann, seem to bask in the new space. I found one of the most powerful sections to be the chapter titled “Fighting with All Our Might,” which included a print by Jose Clemente Orozco and a drawing by Paul Cadmus, both decrying violence against black Americans in the 1930s. In an exhibition centered around American identity, their works stood out as terrifyingly relevant today.
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of David W. Kiehl in memory of artists and artworkers who died of AIDS.Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Gift of David W. Kiehl in memory of artists and artworkers who died of AIDS.
Friday 04.24.15
Young Colored & Angry
A new exhibition featuring the work of young artists and academics of color from across the globe
Photographer Elliott Jerome Brown likes sex and public spaces. This fascination is on display in his editorial, “Meet Me At The Toilets,” inside Issue II of GAYLETTER, and it’s also how Elliot first collaborated with Iranian-American artist Ashley Rahimi Syed: as freshman at NYU Tisch, Syed made a video based on Elliott’s project exploring “The Ramble,” Central Park‘s once-legendary gay hookup spot (from a time when anonymous sex took place in the woods, without phones. Grindr meets Shakespearean pastoral comedy).
Elliot and Ashley are now the Editors-in-Chief of a new online magazine, “Young Colored & Angry,” which “exclusively features the work of young artists and academics of color from across the globe.” The provocatively named magazine goes live April 25th, and the gallery show Elliott andAshley have co-curated to launch it looks as powerful as the title.
From 4:00PM to 6:00PM, Palestinian artist Anas Hamra will Skype in from Gaza to discuss his video installation. Towards the end of the night, Sound artist Dyani Douze and rapper The Quazzy Faffle Show will perform their commissioned piece, “an experimental Lullaby for the mind affected by racial inequality in America.” Throughout the evening the work of Victoria Elle, Rindon Johnson, Daryl Oh and many notable others will be shared in honor of the new magazine.
Young Colored & Angry aims to help create “more spaces where people of color are the dominant voices and the executives of their own work,” Elliott says. …
Wednesday 04.15.15
MARTIN GUTIERREZ: CAN SHE HEAR YOU
We are officially fans of the artist Martin Gutierrez, we wrote up his first show last year at Ryan Lee gallery in NYC. It was a gender bending exhibition that included photography, film and performance art. We now recommend you to go to his second show, on view at the same gallery. This mixed media exhibition features “music videos, a site-specific installation, and two new series of photographs…” The large colorful and stylized photographs can easily fit into the pages of a high fashion magazine, they show a variety of characters (mannequins and the artist himself).
“Gutierrez continues to investigate identity, both personal and collective, through the transformation of physical space and self. Interested in the fluidity of relationships and the role of genders within each, he employs mannequins as his counterparts to explore the diverse narratives of intimacy.” He incorporates a variety of materials into his work, such as “plastic leis, table skirts, vinyl, and tape, transforming them into authentic sets, accessories, and costumes that reference iconic films and people, including Milla Jovovich in Jean Paul Gaultier for The Fifth Element, Showgirls, and Brigitte Bardot.” Gutierrez is a very versatile artist, not sure if he’s sexually too, but he’s able to do hair and make-up, costume, set design as well as lighting, directing and photography. Werk!
FREE, 10:00AM–6:00PM, RYAN LEE GALLERY, 527 W. 26TH ST. NY, NY. …
Wednesday 04.08.15
Art: Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks
Mossy and I went to see the Brooklyn Museum’s new exhibition last week — Basquiat: The Unknown Notebooks — the exhibition, as its title implies, focuses on a relatively unknown aspect of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s work. It features 160 pages from a series of notebooks the artist created that reveal a subtler and more nuanced side of his work than the paintings most of us are familiar with. They’re filled with sketches, fragments of poetry, and even the phone numbers of boys and girls you can’t help but wonder if he ever called. The exhibition also displays larger works on paper and paintings, which are filled with text that often shows up in the notebooks. The notebooks are exciting because they show a sparer, more minimal side of Basquiat that is still evocative of his particular view of city life and American culture. Kehinde Wiley’s extravagant retrospective is also currently on view at the Brooklyn Museum, so you really have no excuse to not hop on the 2 or 3 train and head on over.
Tamra Davis (American, b. 1962). Still from A Conversation with Basquiat, 2006. 23 min., 22 sec. © Tamra Davis. Courtesy of the artist. By permission of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, all rights reserved. Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum.Tamra Davis (American, b. 1962). Still from A Conversation with Basquiat, 2006. 23 min., 22 sec. © Tamra Davis. Courtesy of the artist. By permission of the Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat, all rights reserved. Photo: Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum.
Friday 04.03.15
The Last Boys
Barry Marré's first photo book
Barry Marré’s latest photo book, The Last Boys, is sensual; his portraits are just as much about the beautiful men as they are the shadows draped across their torsos, the colors of the wall, or the undies pooling on their thighs. It is not simply an exploration of Marré’s subjects, but of the relationship between photographer and model, atmosphere and objective.
While the handsomeness of his work is not easily overlooked, Marré’s dedication to the tensions between rawness and composure, strength and vulnerability, hints at a story behind each image. “Letting go is a striking motto for me. Exactly in those moments in between the postures my best images arise.”
But even if you’re not in it for the more subtle narratives, the images — as well as the boys — are simply stunning. Admire the light on his clavicle, or the green of his eyes, or just the texture of his foreskin, either way The Last Boys will leave you wanting more.
Thursday 04.02.15
Luke Smalley – Retrospective
Here's a sneak peak from the exhibition
I had this girlfriend once, I’m sure you know the type, you’d make plans with her and if something better came up she’d ditch you and take the better offer. Well, I’m not that kind of girl, BUT, I will say I was all set to write about Sebastião Salgado’s opening this Thursday when I got a last minute email from ClampArt about a Luke Smalley – Retrospective and had to write about it instead (sorry Sebastião). Luke died suddenly at the age of 53 but left behind 3 distinct bodies of photography this exhibition addresses titled Gymnasium, Exercise at Home and Sunday Drive. Once a model and personal trainer, Luke graduated from Pepperdine University with a degree in sports médecine — a propos for the development of his minimalistic yet graphic athletic, aesthetic sensibility.
His first series, Gymnasium, took 15 years to hone and then Luke moved on to his foray into color with his second body of work titled Exercise at Home, that followed Gymnasium “in it’s themes of adolescent growing pains acted out under the guise of earnest athleticism.” Oh, OK ,the images are so homoerotic yet transcend this category into a whole other territory of refined artistry. I got so excited when the gallery forwarded three images, one from each body of work, I could barely write. Take the time to attend the opening (6-8PM) and if it’s not possible because something better came up make sure you see this show before it closes on May 9th. …
©Luke Smalley/Smalley Partnership, "1st Year Anniversary," 2008. Gelatin silver print, Courtesy of ClampArt, NYC.
Wednesday 04.01.15
Art: The Leslie Lohman Drawing studio with Ché B Trifling
Leslie Lohman has been hosting studio session each week, on Wednesday nights, where models “are posed in sexually provocative ways....” Ok, you have my attention — an erotic gay drawing session, I’m in! I reached out to the performer and artist Ché B. Triffling to ask him what people should expect at the drawing studio session. He replied: “there'll be between 20-30 artists drawing me... And the last pose I do will be me jerking off for 20 minutes on a bed.” This is going to be Ché’s first time doing this event, for those of you that don’t know who he is, his work often features strip/gogo and burlesque — at least we know he’s gonna be comfortable naked. The venue recommends that you arrive early to get a good spot, I also heard that this is not a group for beginners, you’ll have to show a portfolio beforehand, but I am sure even if you are not that talented you can pay the entrance fee and convince them to let you do it. Some rules for you to know, don’t speak to the model, don’t offer him a blow job, clean up after yourself, no photography, put your phone away — Instagram can wait — just use some common sense.
