Whitehot Magazine
"The Best Art In The World"
Interviews on, for and about the queer body in eight parts: Robert Andy Coombs, Patricia Cronin, Jordan Eagles, Joy Episalla, Brendan Fernandes, Vanessa German, Xu Guanyu, Clarity Haynes, Karen Heagle, LJ Roberts, Catalina Schleibener, Pamela Sneed, Harrison Tenzer, Jesse James Thompson, Alexander Richard Wilson, and Sarp Kerem Yavuz
March 3 through March 14, 2021
By WM, March 2021
From the press release:
Hook, a Bay Area-based online venue, is pleased to present Interviews on, for and about the queer body in eight parts, an exhibition and video installation curated by Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works in Brooklyn. The exhibition premieres on March 3rd and will be available to view through March 14th at hookart.com. The show brings together 16 queer contemporary artists from throughout the U.S. whose works explore various facets of queer identity. From queer youth to queer community to queer narrative, the digital exhibition features thematic ideas, each explored by a pair of artists whose works resonate with one another. Each space within the exhibition features a selection of works by two paired artists, as well as a video dialogue that allows them to delve further into the topic and to share insights about their work, life, and ideas with the audience. This exhibition is Hook’s first guest curated exhibition.
The exhibition responds, in part, to the lack of conversation and engagement we have been missing over the past year due to COVID-19. “By bringing artists together to begin a natural conversation with one another, the show aims to recreate some of the dialogue that is missing from our current narrative,” said curator Eric Shiner. “Much like might happen at an in-person opening, by pairing works with videos made specially for the exhibition the show allows viewers to learn firsthand about the works they are seeing, and to hear directly from the artists in a more unmediated way than a traditional zoom panel allows. By turning the discussion entirely over to the artists themselves, the exhibition aims to give more authentic voice to the discussion surrounding queer identity.”
The artists included in the show reflect an eclectic group of people able to offer diverse perspectives on the topics being presented. Working throughout the country and in a variety of media, the artists themselves reflect the diversity of the queer community in the U.S. Among the exhibition highlights will be a pairing of works by Brendan Fernandes and Vanessa German exploring Queer Formality. Fernandes, a Canadian artist of Kenyan descent, will exhibit sculptures he creates by casting binding patterns from Shibari rope bondage. These bodiless forms recall Fernandes’s earliest explorations of the absent bodies of African communities in the display of African masks he encountered in western museum collections. These works will be placed in conversation with German’s mixed media assemblages, which use found objects to create works that explore the role of the black female in American society, and the violence often inflicted upon that community.
Also on view will be a pairing of works by Joy Episalla and Alexander Richard Wilson, meditating on Queer Space. Episalla will present a series of ‘foldtograms’ (sculptural photograms), which document her performance work and challenge the notion of what constitutes a photograph. By transforming a traditionally two-dimensional work into a three-dimensional one, she toys with ideas of space, memory, and movement. Wilson creates abstracted, gestural portraits of the landscape of the American west where he now lives. Drawing connections between the way both the natural world and the black body are mistreated and attacked in the US, he uses the expanse of physical space to map his own identity as a queer black man.
Interviews on, for and about the queer body in eight parts will include works by Robert Andy Coombs, Patricia Cronin, Jordan Eagles, Joy Episalla, Brendan Fernandes, Vanessa German, Xu Guanyu, Clarity Haynes, Karen Heagle, LJ Roberts, Catalina Schleibener, Pamela Sneed, Harrison Tenzer, Jesse James Thompson, Alexander Richard Wilson, and Sarp Kerem Yavuz. WM
Whitehot writes about the best art in the world - founded by artist Noah Becker in 2005.
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