It was Old Homo Week at the powerHouse Arena bookstore in the newly posh DUMBO section of Brooklyn. The exhibition was entitled, "'The Male Gaze " and the powerHouse publishing house pulled out its queer backlist and opened up at night for a dozen or so homosexuals of the artistic persuasion to show their wares in the gallery/shop/covert cruising area. We all came out of the gay woodwork to see past acquaintances and view art with references to (or actual depictions of) cocks and balls. The evening was co-sponsored by Christiana Vodka and OUT magazine. (The May 2007 issue of OUT, as visitors could see from the large blow-up in the window, boasts an uncharacteristically brave and creative cover image: a woman holding a Jodie Foster mask in front of her face is shown next to a man with his Anderson Cooper facemask next to the coverline: The Glass Closet: Why The Stars Won't Come Out and Play. Unfortunately the virtues of the cover are blown when we realize that the accompanying article is a tired old Michael Musto star-fucking/star-hating screed. Musto, the anachronistic gossip columnist for the Village Voice is known for merciless pink wit and bitterness about his failure to get into Studio 54 in the 1970s.) So with a complimentary "Clear Cranberry Cosmo" in hand, dozens of sodomites milled about the large ground floor space.
Ryan McGinley
Slava Mogutin
James Bidgood
Naughty (but not new) photographic works by Ryan McGinley, Slava Mogutin, and Jim Bidgood made the biggest splash. Bidgood, who boasts a quintessentially mercurial genius temperament, was nowhere to be found at the height of the event, but his classic images of model Jay Garvin in a sea of handmade flowers and lobsters are still spectacular. The 74-year-old auteur behind the anonymously released film "Pink Narcissus," once told me that he can never be reached on weekends because he trips on acid every Friday pm. to Sunday noon. Rumor has it that Bidgood has been partying less and also selling more prints than ever. It's been almost ten years since his monograph gave a name to the legend, so a resurgence of interest in the marketplace for his much copied works is again overdue.
Russian writer and former porn star Mogutin was in the house with his young boyfriend Brian Kenny, (whose colorful spray paint and oil portraits of boys and their meat are also on display.) Mogutin has officially come into his own as a photographer, with two books of his images being published by powerHouse, and a show at Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery in the works. His "Ilya," a large c-print depicting a hustler boy with a beautiful, bandaged hand crouching coyly in an oversized black Gucci shopping bag, is among the most memorable of the works on display. McGinley's medium-sized early nudes and hipster portraits (in editions of 6) are sexy in a straightforward way and available to anyone with $7,000 to um, blow.
AA Bronson
Other male gays in "The Male Gaze" included Qing Liu, Raymond Carrance, Will Munro, and AA Bronson, the living master of General Idea who now shows at John Connelly Presents and acts as director of Printed Matter. At several points in the evening Bronson's "Mirror Sequences," justifiably drew a crowd. Joe Ovelman's hilarious Sharpie on Post-it note drawings ("Refuse to Pay More than $25 for a Nineteen Year Old," or "Promise to Sleep With Party Promoters,") bemused a few less-artsy fags. One aging queer punk was heard to say in a chilly but subtle tone: "These look like they should be on my refrigerator." Or maybe Truman Capote's medicine cabinet.
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Paul Mpagi Sepuya's frontal portraits of shirtless friends on white backgrounds are consistently evocative. There's a Wilhelm von Gloeden vintage albumen print of a man in a loincloth and a Jack Pierson image of a Jack Pierson word piece. Robert Filippini has wheatpasted one of the pillars in the store with slogans such as "Kill the Poor." A perfunctory Paul P. watercolor is hung in the gallery, presumably because the publishing house has a book of his work planned. Filmmaker Bruce LaBruce contributes a triptych of photographs entitled 'The arrogance of the strong will be met by the violence of the weak' - the red text is dropped over anal sex close-ups in a porny version of early Barbara Kruger. LaBruce, like a Canadian Rip Taylor seeking attention, likes to throw his own kind of confetti on art world pretensions, all the while participating in the game. He has been known to cast himself as a sexual player in his films, but presumably the pecker-in-sphincter on display here is a grab from one of his dirty vids. Christian Holstad's banner of party letters that spells out "I-N-F-E-C-T--O-T-H-E-R-S" is certainly the most original and arguably the only truly radical piece in this group show.
Bruce LaBruce
Christian Holstad
PowerHouse Arena books is without question one of the most innovative publishers of art and photo-related volumes. The list of high-quality books includes artists from Disfarmer to George Condo, photographers Nat Finkelstein, Anna Gaskell and John Coplans, and subjects as diverse as boxing and Afghanistan. Their success is something we would all like to see continue. Still, the all-male vanity circle jerk currently on display is, if not exactly reactionary, let's say less than groundbreaking. Maybe it's just the view from my square on the cosmic checkerboard, but last Saturday night in the gallery/bookstore, it felt like the only things missing from the "gay old time" were the self-loathing and showtunes.
Doug McClemont
The Male Gaze
Until 24 May
The PowerHouse Arena
37 Main Street
Brooklyn
New York 11201-1021
T: +1 718 666 3049
www.powerhousebooks.com
Doug McClemont is the former Editor-in-Chief of HONCHO. He is currently writing about his adventures as a mortician.
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