An Embodied Encounter With queer abstraction
It is difficult to make value judgments on works of queer abstraction; in fact, it is antithetical to
do so. Instead, I offer an entanglement of sensory observations and visual/textual
relationalities for readers to dis- and re-entangle as they see fit.
queer abstraction is a national touring group exhibition currently at the Nerman Museum of
Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas. This iteration features twenty LGBTQ artists
and sprawls throughout the museum, occupying multiple spaces.
Image courtesy of the museum.
Posted on the walls of the exhibition are quotes from art historian David J. Getsy’s manifesto,
“10 Theses on Queer Abstraction.” He stresses that both ‘queer’ and ‘abstract’ are fluid
terms that, by nature, resist definitions that pin them down and overdetermine their
meaning.
Even though the point of ‘queer abstraction’ is arguably to get comfortable with
indeterminacy, multiplicity, and open encounter, rough definitions of ‘queer’ and ‘abstraction’
function here. Thus, my embodied experience engaging with the work in the show responds
to these considerations.
Queer is a divisive term–some consider it derogatory, but many have reclaimed it as an
umbrella term for the LGBTQ community. Queer can be a noun–one can be ‘a queer’–but it
is not just an identity politic, it is also a mode of being. A rejection of stable identity
categories and all forms of essentialism is central to understanding queerness, embracing
fluidity, multiplicity, and relativism. Queerness aligns with the peripheral. Everything is queer
in some way or another!
Image courtesy of the museum.
In abstract art, formal relationships within the artwork can allegorize social relationships.
Getsy points that while a dominant curatorial strategy is focused on rendering recognizable
queer bodies and spaces, abstraction is a visual tactic that allows queer subjects to
represent themselves as they see fit. Not only is it a form of self-expression, but it is
politically resourceful when rendering oneself visible can lead to violence in an anti-queer
society. Perhaps you can tuck these frameworks in the back of your mind while engaging
with queer abstraction; the best way to appreciate the artwork in the show is to experience it
openly.
The first work that captivated me was a print called Rainbow Room by Edie Fake, an artist
known for their comic-zines. Art deco motifs serpentined their way across the surface of the
work, which became difficult and architectural, conjuring images in my mind of MC Escher’s
Relativity. It was all pastel and illusionary, Op Art, except for a rocky texture in the corner that
provides an organic, earth-toned grounding again.
Hung opposite the Fake works are the textile designs of Paolo Arau. The medium continues
a long art historical conversation on how textiles were once relegated to the margins of the
art world. Curation of this medium is far too exciting and innovative that to merely use terms
as ‘craft’ or ‘domestic art’ undermines its historical importance. Made up of geometrical
patterns, the imprecise lines of these works act as aporias, queering the perfect painterly
grids that have long been associated with the ‘abstract.’ One could label them ‘queer’
because they subvert what we expect: rather than appearing machinic and disembodied,
Arau’s textile grids are soft, bright, and squishy. Lines are not entirely straight, and points
don’t exactly match up due to the stitched cloth surface.
Occupying another wall of the first gallery space are prints by Matthew Garcia. Superposition
of Us is one print in particular that caught my eye. I immediately recognize the visual
language he employs. (His prints also hang in the coffee shop I work at in the university town
of Lawrence, Kansas.) They consist of entangled surfaces, impossibly woven together,
edging toward illegibility, something unrecognizable and inarticulable. Showcasing an
architecture of mind-bending planes, it looks like Dance by Matisse if the dancers were at a
rave. You look at it, and you know somewhere Karen Barad is nodding in agreement.
Since we both live in Lawrence, I went ahead and had a short conversation with Garcia.
Drawing a comparison to science fiction writers like Octavia Butler, he is “writing his condition
through the work… that’s where it becomes political.” Seeking to “disrupt what people expect
about abstraction,” his work aims to “render representational the abstract theories behind
quantum physics.” Influenced by the relationships between queerness and quantum
mechanics, since both have a fluid nature to them, he finds their intersection a place to
create a speculative world. Describing his work as a gesture toward utopia, Garcia asks,
“What would we look like if we existed as pure potentiality, away from gravity?” My
conversation with the artist further complicated my notion of what an ‘abstract representation’
could be!
The juxtaposition of these three artists’ work, all occupying the same room, made me think
about how queerness by nature is multiple: that is, different (perhaps even seemingly
contradictory) forms of queerness can exist at once, in the same space. Something as
precise, geometric, and horror vacui as Edie Fake’s print can easily be just as queer as
Paulo Arau’s imprecise, organic, minimalist textile pieces. Garcia’s exploration of the
relationship between queerness and particle physics echoes this conclusion: at the quantum
level, common sense is replaced by complete indeterminacy..
To experience the rest of the show in the second gallery, one must pass through a massive
blue beaded curtain–this glimmering waterfall of plastic is Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ sculptural
masterpiece, Untitled (Water). Designed a year before the artist died in 1996 to AIDS-related
complications, he was known for his interactive conceptual sculptures. Gonzalez-Torres
knew the parameters and execution of the piece would depend on the team that curates the
show.
Here, the curtain made me think about the inside/outside distinction of the gallery space. Not
quite in the main gallery, but not entirely outside it either, the sculpture acts more as a
doorway than any kind of reliable, stable structure. Its positioning made me think about how
LGBTQ people have had to erase elements of their identity to assimilate within institutional
standards of normativity. Gonzalez-Torres’ work made inroads toward their accommodation
in institutional structures while still gesturing toward what lies beyond their white walls. His
oeuvre is primarily rooted in cultural activism and education, simplistic enough to be
accessible. This curtain, installed differently in each exhibition venue, imparts an awareness
of assimilation that demands the audience be a participant.
Walking through Untitled (Water), I felt like a molecule passing through a semipermeable cell
membrane–a boundary as opposed to a barrier. And on the other side was my friend Hazel!
Here is where we began our informal tour. The first thing I noticed was Sheila Pepe’s small,
white, amorphous figurines. Occupying a sizeable white table accessible on all sides, the
sculptures appeared child-like at first glance in their curious experimentation of form. Hazel
explained to me that Pepe is primarily a textile artist. One figurine simply seemed to be a
lump of clay that had been squeezed by a hand, but even such a simple creation quickly
became something else in my mind, an apple core or a small votive.
After a few minutes had passed, I had to crack a joke. I astutely observed that everything in
the room looked like dicks. However, it is essential to note that the artist rejects any phallic
interpretation of the works–a sly dismissal of the trite trope of art critics claiming everything is
a phallus, be it a sculpture, the camera, or the paintbrush. The coy joke plays out in Pepe’s
sculpture, Hard and Soft Thing 2. Made up of a wall-mount with a stone on it, a long piece of
soft fabric dangles suggestively off the wall. The curatorial strategy of the show enhancesd
the meaning of the artworks displayed. The lighting shone on Hard and Soft Thing 2, for
example, create shadows which suggest a pair of legs, further driving home the joke. Pepe’s
figurines mimic the iconography of paintings behind them created by her wife, Carrie Moyer:
droopy and organic, like a vase of fleshy flowers.
On the other side of the main gallery space, on the floor, lies Elijah Burgher’s New Horny
Sun Vision. Viewers are once again invited to become participants in the artwork by walking
on top of it. The extensive textile-like work bears repeating symbols of overlaid blue, green,
and orange patterns that function as sigils. Sigils are markings with magical properties that
activate to manifest. Each time someone participates by walking on the canvas (already a
queer transgression of art norms, disorienting to the viewer’s expectations of looking at a
painting on a wall), the physical interaction charges the sigil. It is a powerful articulation of
how encountering artwork in everyday life can be a persuasive communication to change the
lives of everyone involved.
Nearby hangs another textile–Moonflower, created by Bo Hubbard, a Kansas City-based
artist. Designated by the label as an ‘artist rug,’ its surface is puffy, plush, and creamy.
Abstract biomorphic forms intermingle into what could be really anything–a desert quarry, a
tufted topographical map, or clouds passing by in the dawn. Its position on the wall near the
Burgher floor piece tactfully poses questions of functionality. It harkens back to my thoughts
surrounding textiles and Arau’s ‘queering of the grid.’
Linda Besemer’s canvases deconstruct notions of art and its expected notions of
presentation. They refuse the cage of the traditional frame, opting instead to be draped over
rods as if they were bath towels. Instantly captivating, their intense geometric patterns and
saturated neon hues remind me of the Mead notebook covers all the cool kids had in middle
school. They have a commercial sheen compared to the massive, dark-toned works hanging
just across from them, a reminder that there is always room for queer interplay between high
art and low culture.
Image courtesy of the museum. Left: Nicholas Hlobo. Right: Harmony Hammond
Across from Besemer’s work is the work of Nicholas Hlobo. Hlobo’s work consists of four
white canvases placed in a grid, stitched and stuck together by puckered black leather,
adorned to loose ribbons. At first glance, it reminded me of baseball or some kind of Akiraesque
body horror. After reading the label, which placed the work in the context of Apartheid
(Hlobo is South African), I began to think more deeply about possible political readings,
paying more attention to the formal interplay between white and black canvas and flesh,
smooth and striated. In what way could these be allegorized to represent racial tensions,
reparations, structural integrity? The work does not supply us with direct answers. However,
it surely disorients viewers away from minimalism, homogeneity, business-as-usual. And, in
doing this, it nudges them toward a deeper mode of aesthetic engagement that, if embodied
in the day-to-day, would intrinsically operate to deconstruct normative concepts of race and
the white supremacy they uphold.
The next room consists of three artworks, all by Prem Sahib. The largest of his works
consists of a three-pronged arch. It resembles bathroom stalls, a nudge toward public
cruising culture. The black tile that makes up the sculpture is reflective inside but not on the
outside – only when you are passing through it are you visually reminded of yourself, your
flesh. The ominous structure has an otherworldly presence
Another artwork in the room is a water fountain encased in a bluish resin. Initially installed in
a gay bathhouse frequented by Sahib, he rescued this particular piece of plumbing when the
place was shuttered and preserved it forever, materially and archivally, entombed in a sterile
plastic, a frozen block of formaldehyde. What once occupied a zone of erotic pleasure,
excitement, and engagement now sits in a museum. It is not allowed to be touched or used.
The process behind the work imbues it with a sense of sentimentality oft missing from
artifacts designated in the archive as ‘queer.’ Perhaps cells of lip-skin or saliva were
preserved along with the metal, giving it an equally abject and erotic quality.
Queerness will likely always remain an anathema. Rather than focusing on the intrinsic
factors of the queer experience, abstraction provides a transcendent mode of expression that
topically gestures toward what could be. In this way, queerness and abstraction go hand in
hand–both are gestures toward some ideal realm. While the world might not be that place
yet, queer abstraction is a thought experiment that asks, what if it was?