Visual
AIDS and The Body
present:
dream makers
Curated by Wayne Northcross
EDUARDO MIRALLES
Sheer Gucci Underwear, 1998
Oil on canvas, 36" x 24"
This month, Wayne Northcross curates the artwork of
Archive Members; David Abbott, Valerie Caris, Luis Carle, Stephen TARO
Clark, Bruce Cratsley, Joe DeHoyos, Jimmy DeSana, Ken Goodman, Tim Greathouse,
Michael Harwood, Michael Lee, Eduardo Miralles, Luna Luis Ortiz, Rene
Santos and Kurt Weston.
NOTE: Previous exhibitions are also available
on the website.
In the Curator’s
Statement:
My queer
awakening came into focus when at 15, I chanced upon a Studio
54 blue jean advertisement in the September 1983 issue of
GQ magazine. The semi-nude male model was photographed in
profile as he pulls up the tight dark denim. I had never
seen an image of such doggedly brazen sensuality. From that
moment, the art of dressing and the art of creating desire
for clothes through erotic expression have enraptured me.
The work I have selected from the Visual AIDS archive made
me think of my particular ah-ha moment and of the artists
who were inspired by seductive dreamscapes the fashion machine
produces via fashion editorial, advertising and the runway.
A visual vocabulary of queer erotics, which celebrates
form as flesh, manner as camp and gesture as come-on, has
cohabitated with fashion industry creatives to produce images
that drip with homoerotic fantasies. Who can forget Bruce
Weber's iconic photograph of Olympian Tom Hintnaus posing
in his Calvin Klein briefs against a backdrop of whitewashed
Santorini? Often en par and in cahoots with pornography,
its more blatant purveyor of queer sexuality, these images
travel the crossroads where the skin trade, art and commerce
meet. Eduardo Mirales' Sheer Gucci Underwear is as much
homage to butt cheeks as it to then Gucci designer Tom Ford's
unfailing ability to hone in on the money shot. In Michael
Harwood's Marky on 57th Street, an advertisement for Calvin
Klein underwear photographed by Herb Ritts and featuring
Mark Wahlberg in high come-on mode fights for meaning and
attention with other signs. In the photograph a "NO
LEFT TURN" traffic sign humorously suggests that gazing
at Marky's crotch is looking the wrong way but it also points
back to the history of homoerotic expression used to sell
dreams.
Fashion's fun house of mirrors acts as an interlocking
series of undetermined glances, a fractured state that makes
trying on and discarding gender roles and identities seamless.
At one time I was obsessed with Inès de la Fressange,
the quintessentially chic model who posed for Chanel in
the 1980's. I had dutifully replaced all the pictures on
my bedroom wall of shirtless teen stars torn from Tiger
Beat with images of her lifted from broadsheet W magazine.
Joe DeHoyos' Gaultier, a collage of images from the designer's
runway and advertising campaigns, is a cut-and-paste storyboard
directing the viewer to alternative personae that could
have been culled from the same publication. The model in
Stephen Clark's Armani is slightly androgynous, a style
that dovetails nicely with the designer's mix of masculine
and feminine elements. While in Michael Lee's Menswear #3,
it may seem obvious that the female model dominates the
illustration, it can easily be argued that the debonair,
handsome man behind her is the eroticized subject.
Fashion archetypes such as the diva, jock, pinup, socialite
or ephebe provide the grist for the fashion narrative mill,
spinning tales that are removed from the everyday. To reinforce
desire and identity, fashion routinely imbues its objects
with a lifestyle narrative that communicates more than just
cut and drape. Bruce Crastley's sharply tailored coat in
Black Coat Reflected appears lifeless without an occupant.
But even as a still life it is not a stretch to imagine
who would inhabit it and flesh it out, someone distinguished,
elegant. Part of the power of a fashion image is its revelation
that a personality, an individual, a face exists. Valerie
Caris' Poses and Kurt Weston's Fallen Angels are bombshell
and biker chick portraits whose center frame portrait style
brings to mind classic yearbook photography. In a wry twist,
Rene Santos' Untitled, which mixes archival photography
and text, questions the viewer's attenuated relationship
with a fashion image, suggesting that fashion promotes not
just glamour and beauty but a heavy dose of self-doubt,
self-loathing and inadequacy.
The runway is a performance space where theatrical enactments
of desire and archetypes parade. Fashion shows can be either
excruciatingly dull or wonderfully inspiring. One show that
will never leave my mind is John Bartlett's Spring 1996
show where the designer, dressed à la Cubano and
suspended in a hammock at the entrance to the runway, did
not reveal his identity until the show's finale. In David
Abbott's Eyes of the Gliteratti, one could read on the faces
of the guests either a detached bafflement or blithe nonchalance.
In Kurt Weston's The Runway, by contrast, one gets the feeling
by watching the slow building tumult in the audience that
by the time the model has completed her sashay, something
memorable will have happened.
b i o g r a p h y
Wayne Northcross was born in Detroit, Mich., where he received
a B.A. in Italian Language and Literature before studying
law at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. As
an independent curator, Northcross has organized exhibitions
for Bronx Art Space, The Bronx Museum, The Project Gallery,
New York, Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, New York, the Fusebox
Festival, Austin, Texas, and Bronx River Arts Center. He
has written criticism and essays on gay culture for Gay
City News and The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review
Worldwide. As a magazine editor he has contributed
contemporary art and fashion editorial features for Vogue
Hommes, Out and Esquire. He currently resides
in New York City.
Every
month, Visual AIDS invites guest curators,
drawn from both the arts and AIDS communities, to select several
works from the Frank Moore Archive Project.
Founded in 1988 by arts professionals as a response to the
effects of AIDS on the arts community and as a way of organizing
artists, arts institutions, and arts audiences towards direct
action, Visual AIDS has evolved into an arts organization
with a two-pronged mission: 1) Through the Frank Moore Archive
Project, the largest slide library of work by artists living
with HIV and the estates of artists who have died of AIDS,
Visual AIDS historicizes the contributions of visual artists
with HIV while supporting their ability to continue making
art and furthering their professional careers, 2) In collaboration
with museums, galleries, artists, schools, and AIDS service
organizations, Visual AIDS produces exhibitions, publications,
and events utilizing visual art to spread the message “AIDS
IS NOT OVER.”
The Body
is now the most frequently visited HIV/AIDS-related site on
the Web, according to the Medical Library Association and
also the most frequently visited disease-specific site on
the Web, according to Hot 100. The Body contains a rich collection
of information on topics ranging from HIV prevention, state-of-the-art
treatment issues, humor and art. An invaluable resource, The
Body is used by clinicians, patients and the general public.
Part of The Body's mission is to enable artistic expression
to reach the Web, and to join art with other resources needed
to help the public comprehend the enormity and devastation
of the AIDS pandemic and to experience its human and spiritual
dimensions. |
Visual
AIDS
526 W. 26th St. # 510, New York, NY 10001
Phone: 212.627.9855
· Fax: 212.627.9815
e-mail: info@visualAIDS.org
Visual AIDS Gallery
|