***EXHIBITION*** CUT UPS: QUEER COLLAGE PRACTICES

Anita Steckel: Anita of New York Meets Tom of Finland, 2005 (mixed media on book pages)

Cut-Ups: Queer Collage Practices brings together works by an intergenerational group of fourteen 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. Cut Ups: Queer Collage Practices opens on October 14, 2016 to the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art direct from Los Angeles where it was exhibited as Cock, Paper, Scissors (April 2 – July 10, 2016). This exhibition was 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. 

 Jade Yumang: Weeklies #19.37 (New York City), 2012

Cut-Ups: Queer Collage Practices places special focus on the work of four rarely exhibited artists that produced collages for personal pleasure drawn from the collections at ONE 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 collages by erotic artist Olaf Odegaard. From the Leslie-Lohman Museum, the anonymous “West End Avenue Collection,” is 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. In addition, the exhibition includes collages by Steve Blevins as reproduced in gay porn magazines from the 1980s, often as illustrations for erotic fiction. Theses eclectic producers all utilize gay male pornography to innovative and wildly explicit ends. 

Suzanne Wright: Double Trouble, 2014 (photo collage)

Cut-Ups, while undoubtedly a celebration of the numerous uses of gay male pornography, includes historical and contemporary feminist collage practices that address gay male phallocentrism with feminist critique and lesbian power. This exhibition incorporates 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; 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. 

Suzanne Wright: Untitled (Holding Colony), 2015 (photo collage)

Many of the artists in Cut-Ups: Queer Collage Practices 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. 

Suzanne Wright: Untitled (3rd Street Tunnel), 2015 (photo collage)

Cut-Ups: Queer Collage Practices is accompanied the Cock, Paper, Scissors 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. 

Enrique Castrejon: Anonymous male passenger fragmented and measured in inches, 2016 (collage, glue, pigment ink, and graphite on paper)

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.

The exhibition runs until December 18 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, NYC.

All imagery and text were kindly supplied by the Leslie-Lohman Museum and the copyright for both, is theirs. 

About the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art

“…invaluable museum.” Holland Cotter, New York Times, June 2013

“a mirror for gay history,” Hugh Ryan, Smithsonian, July 2015

The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is the first and only dedicated LGBTQ art museum in the world with a mission to exhibit and preserve LGBTQ art, and foster the artists who create it. The Museum has a permanent collection of over 30,000 objects, 6-8 major exhibitions annually, artist talks, film screenings, readings, THE ARCHIVE - a quarterly art newsletter, a membership program, and a research library. The Leslie-Lohman Museum began as the Leslie/Lohman Gay Art Foundation, Inc., a non-profit founded in 1987 by Charles W. Leslie and Fritz Lohman, who have supported gay and lesbian artists for over 30 years. The Leslie-Lohman Museum embraces the rich creative history of the LGBTQ art community by educating, informing, inspiring, entertaining, and challenging all who enter its doors. 

The Museum is located at 26 Wooster Street in the SoHo neighborhood of New York City. Admission is free, and hours are Tuesday through Sunday, 12-6 pm, and Thursday, 12-8 pm. The Museum is closed Monday and all major holidays. The Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art is a non-profit organization and is exempt from taxation under section 501(c)3 of the IRS Code. The Museum can be reached at 212-431-2609. For more information, go toLeslieLohman.org.

All work is copyrighted to the artist. Please ask permission before sharing imagery. Thank you.