Opening: Friday, October 12th, 2018 @ 6:00pm
The Tom of Finland Foundation
1421 Laveta Terrace
Los Angeles, CA 90026
John Wolf Fine Art is pleased to announce its inclusion in the Spring/Break Art Show 2018 with an exhibition entitled, “Secret Gay Box.” The theme of the 2018 edition of the fair is ‘Stranger Comes to Town’ — an artistic examination of those who are seemingly or actually different than the world around them.
Like Tracey Emin’s My Bed this “Secret Gay Box” will encapsulate a moment in the life of an individual—but rather than doing this through a single object or work, it will use a variety of works in different mediums from different times to create the ethos of adolescent formation; a time characterized by flux and uncertainty. It will be a powerful comment on the construction of identity through collected, foraged, sometimes fiercely protected influences.
This exhibition will explore how the life and meaning of an object can change when it is contextualized within a secret, unconventional space, and it will show what objects can embody and communicate when viewed individually and as a group. The works within will have what Eve Sedgwick has coined “texxture,”—”the kind of texture that is dense with offered information about how, substantially, historically, materiality, it came into being.” The “texxture” of eadch individual object will communicate its origin, its place in queer history, its emotional significance. The show as a collective will also have its own “texxture” which tells its highly individual and intimate origin as a collection of secret gay items.
This “texxture” will point to a specific moment in the life of a very specific young boy learning to creatively nurture a part of himself that he had to hide. But this specificity is a paradox; because in order to find himself, he must travel through time and space. This “Secret Gay Box” is both a fluctuating document of a person’s individuality; it is a time capsule and it is also a time machine. It will be the collision point for a variety of contradictory impulses; stranger and family member; individual and collective; a single moment in the history of a single boy’s sexuality, and the expansive history of queerness embodied in a menagerie of objects from across time. Enter the world of the secret gay box, and find the stranger that lives within.
Artists in the exhibition:
Andrew Brischler, Andrew Salgado, Andy Warhol, Brian Andrew Whiteley, David Wojnarowicz, Don Joint, Hossein Edalatkhah, Jack Pierson, Jose Gonzalo Garcia Munoz, Joseph La Piana, Justin Olerud, Lucas Michael, Robert Mapplethorpe, Mark Beard, Matt Siegle, Michael Stamm, Mike Kuchar, Patrick Angus, Puppies Puppies, Rashaad Newsome, Raymond Pettibon, and Stuart Sandford.