MALE - An Exhibition

MALE – an exhibition curated by VINCE ALETTI
4 September — 3 October 2010
private view: Saturday 4th September 6.30 – 8.30 pm


MAUREEN PALEY.
21 Herald Street
London E2 6JT

Male is an exhibition and book on understanding the many representation's of masculinity.
These images will involve the stereotypical look of: the jock, the rebel, the thug, the stud, the pretty boy and so on. I think it sounds quite intriguing and defiantly hope to get up there to check it out.

Taken from the Press Release.


"Not one version of masculinity, but many variations, gathered here side-by-side for a conversation, an exchange—sometimes reasoned, often heated. What do these guys have to say to one another? And to us?

For me, and for many of the artists gathered here, pictures of men are rarely neutral. Desire, with its potential for drama, always complicates things. The male gaze is often at its most intense when directed at another male, and even a casual look can be charged (Wolfgang Tillmans’ photographs of two passersby seen from the back). Whether romantic, erotic, or some messy combination of the two, the work is far from cool. It’s ardent, obsessed, freaked-out, blissed-out, sexy. Material appropriated from internet hook-up sites (Graham Durward), vintage porn (Stephen Irwin), turn-of-the-century medical records (Gary Schneider), and various, frequently pastiched, printed sources (Paul P., Geoffrey Chadsey, Attila Richard Lukacs) is re-interpreted with a mix of devilish devotion and passionate restraint. The violently disheveled boy from Jack Pierson’s “Self-Portrait” series, the stocky working man and quartet of Puerto Rican brothers who posed in Peter Hujar’s bare East Village studio, the young beauties in Scott Treleaven’s flower-strewn dreamscapes, and the proto-punk dandies Karlheinz Weinberger cultivated in postwar Zurich have nothing and everything in common.

They come together here not to define the concept of maleness but to keep the definition as open and fluid as possible. Masculinity can be a straitjacket, an armour plate, a bad joke. Or it can be loose, light, and vibrant: Something unexpected, something sweet, something wild."