In the Curator’s
Statement:
"Darlin'
darlin' darlin'
I can't wait to see you
Your picture ain't enough
I can't wait to touch you in the flesh
Darlin' darlin' darlin'
I can't wait to hear you
Remembering your love
Is nothing without you in the flesh"
-- "In The Flesh," Blondie
These paintings,
drawings, photographs, and sculptures form a scrapbook of
New York City by a handful of the thousands upon thousands
of artists who have lived and loved here. They are flâneurs,
looking at the city from multiple vantage points and at
all hours: rooftop, windowsill, busy avenue, dark corner,
dark bar, broad daylight, and 3 a.m. Theirs is a private
version of New York City, unlikely to find its way into
any guidebook. These are visual love letters.
Luis Carle shows an aerial view of the gay pride parade,
its revelry reduced to pure geometry. Ricardo Morin's mixed
media paintings are abstract, angular interpretations of
the metropolis in action, lending a voyeuristic sensation.
Robert Miles Parker, Martin Wong and James Romberger drew
and painted intersections, storefronts and backyards, memorializing
the anonymous, while David Wojnarowicz, under the mask of
Rimbaud, roamed the Meatpacking District in its pre-gentrified
days.
Felix Gonzalez-Torres's billboard made public the tender
scene of a freshly slept-in bed he shared with his lover,
installed shortly after his lover passed away from AIDS-related
illness. Tony Feher's sculptural installation transports
the sentimentality of the everyday with simple objects --
marble, soap, cans and bottles. Casually propped on the
windowsill, at the artist's home or studio, they are imbued
with quietude and longing. They protect the artist from
and link him to the world beyond.
Jose Luis Cortes's sexualized reworking of a Christie's
ad contemplates and confounds the exchange of body, art
and money. Sex as art, and art as commerce. And sometimes
desire glimmers in the flash of a jockstrap in the darkest
bar, as with John Morrison and Vincent Cianni's documents
of life after dark. The pleasurable abandon is palpable.
Once again, we are conscious of ourselves as sensual beings,
a promise that if we continue to feel, touch, love, perhaps
nothing will ever be lost or taken from us.
Finally, Bruce Crastley's 1976, flash-lit photo of an ice
block is transcendent and mesmerizing. A moment frozen in
time. The future is impossible to know. Will the ice melt
away or stay the same?
b i o g r a p h y
Jo-ey Tang is a New York-based artist and former photo
director of OUT magazine. He received his BFA from San Francisco
Art Institute. His work has been exhibited internationally,
including at Goff+Rosenthal Gallery, Berlin, Bond Street
Gallery, Brooklyn and Intersection for the Arts, San Francisco.
Every
month, Visual AIDS invites guest curators,
drawn from both the arts and AIDS communities, to select several
works from the Frank Moore Archive Project.
Founded in 1988 by arts professionals as a response to the
effects of AIDS on the arts community and as a way of organizing
artists, arts institutions, and arts audiences towards direct
action, Visual AIDS has evolved into an arts organization
with a two-pronged mission: 1) Through the Frank Moore Archive
Project, the largest slide library of work by artists living
with HIV and the estates of artists who have died of AIDS,
Visual AIDS historicizes the contributions of visual artists
with HIV while supporting their ability to continue making
art and furthering their professional careers, 2) In collaboration
with museums, galleries, artists, schools, and AIDS service
organizations, Visual AIDS produces exhibitions, publications,
and events utilizing visual art to spread the message “AIDS
IS NOT OVER.”
The Body
is now the most frequently visited HIV/AIDS-related site on
the Web, according to the Medical Library Association and
also the most frequently visited disease-specific site on
the Web, according to Hot 100. The Body contains a rich collection
of information on topics ranging from HIV prevention, state-of-the-art
treatment issues, humor and art. An invaluable resource, The
Body is used by clinicians, patients and the general public.
Part of The Body's mission is to enable artistic expression
to reach the Web, and to join art with other resources needed
to help the public comprehend the enormity and devastation
of the AIDS pandemic and to experience its human and spiritual
dimensions. |
