There is a fantastic space where no one lives. It exists in between the subject and the artist. These five artists work with the photographic image to present this space—from the extraordinarily faithful to the imagined confessional. A Grecian urn houses the ashes of the dead while their story is festooned on its hide; John Keats asks in “Ode to A Grecian Urn,” What men or gods are these? Portraiture is our modern day Grecian urn. Within these works, masculinity is held inside the shape of loss, though its history remains immortalized upon the exterior. Comparably, Marsden Hartley's Portrait of a German Officer presents the essence of this ideology. Often the emotional and representational implications of the work are overshadowed by its painterly formal aspects, which creates a disservice to the genre of portraiture. Hartley's portrait of his lover Karl Von Freyburg, who went to war and died, is depicted through no human form. We see dramatic colors and brushstrokes outline both emotion and explanation. And now, daily, we consume portraits without question and make the absorption digestible, further simplifying the genre. This exhibition asks the viewer to see beyond the obvious. Yes, the artists are queer. Yes, there is queer celebration and contemplation. Yes, there is sex but what is beyond the exterior?
What are you looking at?