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12.16.2014

Gender Issues

Fair and Loathing: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times 
Fair and Loathing: Coincidences, Trends and a Coupla WTFs
Fair and Loathing: Big Paintings
Fair and Loathing: Art? Not Art?
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Seeing Elmgreen & Dragset's sculpture of a little boy in high heels and lipstick, gazing at himself in the mirror, prompted me to see who else was addressing gender issues. I found a few penises (on girls and boys), Tracey Emins's commentary on sexual relations, an inscrutable reference to La Lesbienne, an Amazon that could go either way (exploitation or empowerment, that is), and then the work that opens this post--all reminders that politics slips into our studio practice, just as our commentary makes its mark in the world.


Michele Pred vintage purses with neon at Nancy Hoffman Gallery, New York City; Miami Project
Closer view below



Above and below:
Elmgreen & Dragset, The Experiment, at Victoria Miro, London: ABMB


Above and Below:
Jack Early at Fergus McCaffrey, New York City; ABMB
What you can't tell from the images is that a recording was playing in the booth in which Early references coming to terms with his sexuality



Above and below: The (in)famous Lynda Benglis 1974 photograph for Art Forum, shown above with with work by Louise Bourgeois (who also never shied away from a penis), and below in all is greased-up glory, at Cheim + Read, New York City; ABMB


Alexandre da Cunha, Amazons (Painting II), at Thomas Dane Gallery, London; ABMB

David Altmejd,  Le Lesbienne, at Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York City; ABMB
I can't figure it out, either, but here's David Ebony in Art in America: "Altmejd's hallucinatory images often beg for a narrative . . .but Altmejd disagrees. He thinks of his work instead as simply strange and rather dreamlike, with an aim toward poetry not provocation-to surprise rather than shock." 


Tracey Emins, Volcano Closed, at White Cube, London; ABMB
Tracey explains he Birds and Bees

I'm sill working on another Painting post. It's coming

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