Locaton: Plummer Park, Long Hall
1200 North Vista Street
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Artists: Steve Blevins, Enrique Castrejon, Mary Beth Edelson, Graphic Albums Collection, Kate Huh & L.J. Roberts, Glenn Ligon, Marlene McCarty, Jonathan Molina-Garcia, Olaf Odegaard, Anita Steckel, Ingo Swann, West End Collection, Suzanne Wright, and Jade Yumang
"Cock, Paper, Scissors" brings together works by an intergenerational group of fifteen queer artists who explore the collaged page or the scrapbook with...
Locaton: Plummer Park, Long Hall
1200 North Vista Street
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Artists: Steve Blevins, Enrique Castrejon, Mary Beth Edelson, Graphic Albums Collection, Kate Huh & L.J. Roberts, Glenn Ligon, Marlene McCarty, Jonathan Molina-Garcia, Olaf Odegaard, Anita Steckel, Ingo Swann, West End Collection, Suzanne Wright, and Jade Yumang
"Cock, Paper, Scissors" brings together works by an intergenerational group of fifteen queer artists who explore the collaged page or the scrapbook with diverse, erotically inclined tactics. The exhibition draws from both archival collections and contemporary practices, focusing on how these artists reuse the pieces of print culture for worldmaking projects ranging from the era of gay liberation to the present.
"Cock, Paper, Scissors" places special focus on the work of four rarely exhibited artists that produced collages for personal pleasure drawn from the collections at ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. From ONE, this includes the anonymous “Graphic Albums Collection,” which combines gay male pornography with pages from interior design and visual arts magazines, and the collages by erotic artist Olaf Odegaard. From the Leslie-Lohman Museum, this includes the anonymous “West End Collection,” a vast archive of Xeroxed collages of BDSM imagery, many including Nazi fetishism, and collages by psychic Ingo Swann, who developed a process known as “remote viewing” for the CIA during the 1970s. Theses eclectic producers all utilize gay male pornography to innovative and wildly explicit ends. In addition, the exhibition includes collages by Steven Blevins as reproduced in gay porn magazines from the 1980s, often as illustrations for erotic fiction.
While "Cock, Paper, Scissors" is undoubtedly a celebration of the numerous uses of gay male pornography, the inclusion of historical and contemporary feminist collage practices seeks to address gay male phallocentrism with feminist critique and lesbian power. The exhibition includes a site-specific installation by feminist pioneer Mary Beth Edelson, part of an ongoing series of collage projects initiated years after her renowned collage posters of the 1970s; a series of preparatory collages by Marlene McCarty produced for her large-scale drawings of young women who committed patricide; and a series of mixed-media collages by veteran feminist artist Anita Steckel that places the artist within drawings by Tom of Finland, exploring the possibility of alternate forms of cross-gender desire and visual pleasure.
Many of the artists in "Cock, Paper, Scissors" utilize collage for deconstruction or intervention within the circulation of images. Enrique Castrejon meticulously cuts-up and measures the figures from the gay porn magazine Black Inches. Jonathan Molina-Garcia combines images of his own body with those of older HIV+ men as part of a larger series on gay male intergenerational knowledge. Suzanne Wright merges the female body with monumental and utopian architecture. Glenn Ligon plays with the vernacular form of the photo-album, combining fetishistic photographs of Black men with family photographs. Jade Yumang screen-prints pages from vintage porn magazines onto fancifully decorative bundles of soft sculpture phalluses. In a newly commissioned work responding to the archive of West End, Kate Huh utilizes fragments from the collection to produce collages that are embroidered by LJ Roberts.
"Cock, Paper, Scissors" is accompanied by a catalogue featuring essays by the exhibition’s curators, three original interviews with artists, and reprints of historical texts. The catalogue, published by ONE Archives at the USC Libraries with the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, is designed by Kimberly Varella of Content Object and will be released in June 2016.
More information on "Cock, Paper, Scissors" here: http://one.usc.edu/cock-paper-scissors/
Cock, Paper, Scissors
On view April 2 – July 10, 2016
Plummer Park, Long Hall
1200 North Vista Street
West Hollywood, CA 90046
Exhibition hours: Thursday-Sunday, 1-5pm; Closed Monday-Wednesday
Location
"Cock, Paper, Scissors" is presented in the Long Hall at West Hollywood’s Plummer Park, the same location where ONE presented "KillJoy’s Kastle: A Lesbian Feminist Haunted House." The Long Hall is located north of the Plummer Park Community Center and south of the parking lot off North Vista Street. The exhibition will be open to the public Thursday-Sunday, 1-5pm (Closed Monday-Wednesday). During gallery hours an exhibition attendant will be available at 323.546.9299.
Support
"Cock, Paper, Scissors" is organized by David Evans Frantz, Curator at ONE Archives at the USC Libraries; Lucas Hilderbrand, Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies and Director of Visual Studies at UC Irvine; and Kayleigh Perkov, Ph.D. Candidate in Visual Studies at UC Irvine.
Support is provided by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Additional support is provided by the City of West Hollywood through its Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission and the ONE Archives Foundation.
Generous support for the catalogue to accompany this exhibition is provided by the Pasadena Art Alliance, the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and the USC Libraries.
Support for “Reuses of the Erotic: A Symposium on Queer Collage” held at the University of California, Irvine on April 8, 2016, is provided by a University of California Humanities Research Institute (UCHRI) President’s Public Partnership in the Humanities grant.