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13/12/2009

Youthful Gazes

Kim Light, New York

KIM LIGHT / LIGHTBOX Gallery is proud to present its first New York based show, Youthful Gazes, a single evening group exhibition of seven artists exploring the body, youth and sexuality. With the relation to both content and form, the artists engage in the history of the body, specifically the male body, within a long standing visual tradition. This provocative show probes at the interconnection between the viewer and the subject through the reevaluation of the gaze in contemporary artistic practice.

The LA based artist, Dean Sameshima is known for his play with vintage imagery of men. In Young Men at Play #1, 2004, he explores the role of media and popular culture in the relationship to gay men in contemporary society.

Similarly, Anthony Goicolea, a Cuban American artist working in Brooklyn, NY, is recognized for his pictorial reference to homosexuality and youth, in which the viewer is urged to question the controversial relationship between children and sexuality. The role of the gaze is brought into question, as a gender specific term, in defining traditional power relations Anthony Goicolea | Sleeping | 2007 | c-print 50.5 X 40" between men and women.

Andrew Mania, currently working in Bristol with numerous solo and group shows to date, is known for directly engaging with the history of gaze by depicting his portraits confronting the audience and challenging ways of seeing. The theme of the body politic is central to the work of these male artists who explore the male body as a socially charged site worthy of contemplation and discussion. The viewer is invited to enter into a dialogue surrounding sex, sexuality, and sexual preference attesting to a visual, conceptual and theoretical continuum embedded within art history.

Ryan McGinley, at the age of 24, was the youngest artist to have solo show at the Whitney Museum of Art. Like many of these artists, he incorporates the tradition of photography and, in particular, time through provocative documentation of stages within the life course.

This incorporation of time is tied intimately with the portraits of Paul P., a Canadian born artist, through his nostalgic presentations of youthful males. His later works focus on appropriated images of the body. As artists working within the twenty-first century, they bring to mind the visual legacy created by the iconography of the twentieth century with artists from Herbert List to Sally Mann and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Keith Mayerson, who has been exhibiting his work since 1993 worldwide, utilizes the figure as means to comment on the interplay among nature and nurture, the inner and outer spheres, the sacred and the profane. The preoccupation with the profane is evidenced by the work Bruce LaBruce, a film-maker based in Toronto, Canada. Untitled (Reinholdt & Cameltoe), 1998 draws the viewer in a world of eroticism through explicit imagery.

While these artists address issues that have been explored and revisited throughout the history of art, their strategic use of controversial imagery through a diverse visual narrative speaks to a current context. While alluding to a discourse of sexuality and censorship, this exhibition aims to address deeply socio-political issues that converse with the past, the present and the future, spanning the discipline of art history into the realm of popular culture, sociology and gender theory.

Image: Anthony Goicolea, Sleeping, 2007, c-print 50.5 X 40"

Opening Monday December 14, 2009 6-8 pm

Kim Light
300 East 57th Street, New York USA
Tuesday - Saturday 11am-6pm

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