Posted inArt

Ask Me Any (Gendered) Question

CHICAGO — Gender is a fun game to play — if you know the rules and are willing to break them accordingly. As I was working on a story about a queer art show here in Chicago, I found myself thinking about the show as a space for cruising, as if in a bathhouse. Conveniently, much of the art in this show felt like it invited an opportunity for this sort of sidelong, forlorn or even covert gazing at or upon.

Posted inArt

Skewering the Egos of Male Artists at Dia:Beacon

Of the 25 artists whose work is currently on view at Dia:Beacon, four of them are women. (And one of those women is half of a husband-and-wife team.) The open, spacious museum just up the river from New York City is beautiful, staid, and a bit, well, male. Even a fantastic three-room installation of wry Louise Bourgeois sculptures can’t undercut the machismo you get from wandering through a hall full of John Chamberlain pieces (crushed steel), while knowing that under your feet there’s another hall full of Richard Serras (sculpted steel). The male pieces just loom so large — they take up an enormous amount of space, both physically and emotionally.

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If Gender Is a Performance, Can’t Artistic Importance Be Too?

Attending transgender singer, songwriter and performance artist Mx Justin Vivian Bond’s exhibition, The Fall of the House of Whimsy at Participant Inc., I left feeling horribly conflicted, so conflicted that it took me a few weeks to even approach the topic in writing. Even though I originally felt irritated by Bond’s self-mythologizing tenancy, I began to later wonder if Bond’s self-creation as an artistic icon is any different from any other art exhibition.