What We Love: Kick in the Eye
Photos courtesy of Vox Populi
The new exhibition at Vox Populi – “Kick in the Eye” (through May 1) – delivers a full and boundary-pushing spectrum of queer art. Curated by Andrew Suggs, the multimedia works explore eroticism with 10 different artists representing works that range from video and installation to sculpture, drawing and painting. Each artist creates a kind of queer portrait that delves full force into issues of identity, sexuality and psychology.
One of the artists – Graham Durward – presents a series of paintings that are based on found photos of men cruising the Internet and burning incense, while artist Stephen Irwin erases parts of vintage porn magazines to create a collage of body parts. Nicola Tyson’s large-scale paintings also manipulate bodily forms into colorful, almost grotesque portraits.
Other artists in this avant-garde exhibition include Frank Preston – who paints portraits of the “psyche” – videographer Paul Lee who abstractly explore identity, Alexandra Gorczynski’s who offers her take on digital culture and Scott Trevleaven, whose “Last 7 Words” is a video portrait of fellow artist Genesis Breyer P-Orridge, among others.
On Friday, April 8, Vox Populi will screen Andy Warhol’s 66-minute film “The Closet” from 1966 and Derek Jarman’s “Blue” (79 min.) from 1993. In Warhol’s film, Nico (yes, that Nico from the Velvet Underground) and a young and awkward Randy Bourscheidt (he’s now the president of the Alliance for the Arts in New York) have a mundane discussion inside a cramped closet in which they live, while the very stark “Blue” showcases Jarman and others (voices only) discussing love and death from AIDS against a deep blue screen just a few short months before the director himself would succumb to the disease.
Vox Populi, 319 N. 11th St., Third Floor, 215-238-1236.
