Clean Apricot [Chubby Chaser]
To quote myself from
my review of Just Different at the Cobra Museum earlier this year:
“Seeing Richard Hawkins work and thinking about his past foray into abstraction, then viewing the abstract blood and urine images of Anthony Viti (I+R #42-43, 2003) made me wonder about representations of gender, sexuality (and its social context) that stepped outside the figurative. Taking a step back and looking across the exhibition hall, the content leans toward the didactic, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing—but it isn’t the only mode of operation.”
Dirty Hunter Green [Daddy]
Referencing anything—including queerness—with abstraction is an oxymoron of sorts, since the abstract is heading in a direction away from the referent.
Clean Yellow [Water Sports]
The word abstract comes from the Latin abstrahere, meaning to drag away. For something to be abstract is to have it express a quality apart from the object. In the case of Nicholas Grider’s conundrum, a photograph of red has a difficult time living up to a specific referent, since color is more of a quality than an instance. In the example of the photographed bondage gear, that “quality apart” could be a manipulation of the object before it is photographed, like the torn-paper version of the pride flag. Queer abstraction may point back to a non-abstract real world instance, but more importantly, it also points away.
Dirty Red [Fist Fucking]
This has me thinking of some real-world examples that I’ve found successful, and that will eventually lead to a generalizability. And hopefully that will lead to me making some new art.
Clean Hunter Green [Daddy]
Back in my undergrad years, CalArts used to host an erotic art show for the week around Valentine’s Day. Ray Navarro (
profiled on my 12/1 post) borrowed a replacement bathroom mirror from the CalArts physical plant and installed it at waist level in Gallery A402. It was recognizable as one of the flush-mount models that dispenses paper towels from behind the mirror. It was easily recognizable as a specific instance, but due to its placement, it functioned as a device to cruise the crotch level of anyone else who was in the room. For gay men with tearoom experience, the functionality was evident; to everyone else it was a strangely placed mirror.
Dirty Navy Blue [Anal Sex]
I’m also thinking of
Dean Sameshima’s Unkown Pleasures, where the background color matches the hanky code for the sexual act portrayed. For those who know the code, the hidden image is made obvious.
Clean Light Pink [Plays with Toys]
This “leading astray” the uninitiated or the non-player (or conversely, the secret coding for the fellow homosexual) can be read as a type of abstraction. Camp expressions, wearing certain clothing or accessories (when I was in Paris in the 70’s, it was wearing white pants on the Champs-Élysées) are all secret signifiers. Is it any wonder that the precursor to modern gay male subculture and the rise of abstraction occurred at the same time in the same places? Isn’t most of the homosexual lexicon a renaming of a thing with a quality apart from the thing?
Dirty Light Blue [Oral Sex]
More to follow in a couple of days...
Sphere: Related Content
That water sports hankie is a nice image.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I think you're on the right track in thinking about abstraction as pulling away, but that raises the question of what it means (ontologically) for something to both be and not be abstract depending on your subject position. It's a thorny question.
I haven't really thought about it before, but I'm loathe to post text without an image, or vice versa. I thought about your pride flag, and then looked around the house for something I could throw on the flatbed scanner. I caught a cold over Thanksgiving, hence the the folded and crumpled bandannas. I like how the yellow reads too, but it was a lucky accident.
ReplyDeleteI'm reminded of a passage in Rabih Alameddine's "Koolaids: The Art of War." One of the characters is a painter who makes both abstract and representational work (like Gerhard Richter). The main character goes to an opening of the artist's (supposedly) abstract work, and recognized the particular building shapes and colors from his village in Lebanon. Over the course of the evening, the gallerist and friends of the artist eventually come to realize that the work they read as abstract was actually representational.
I'll post more in a couple of days. I'm thinking that the issue of subject position is tied into intentionality. Work can have a subtext, and it can manifest bits of the self that escape the super ego, or it can be placed there for the pleasure of a select few.
Does the GAP logo showing add any adjective on to the color code?
ReplyDeleteThe hankie code was designed to announce one's sexual interests in crowded and noisy bars. If you're looking for a particular type or fetish, the colors would signal your proclivities from a distance. Worn on the right means you're a bottom for the thing, and on your left it would mean you're a top. So the only adjective is location, e.g., the Gap bandanna on the right would mean you're looking for a daddy, and on close inspection, that you shop at the Gap.
ReplyDelete