Wie meinst du das?, 2023
Oil on linen
30 x 45 cm
Julia Dubsky considers acting, painting and the historically gendered depiction of modesty in art. She proposes that painting is a medium that has taken on different roles throughout history, akin to the multitude of characters played by a famous actor. In recent years she has focused on two colours, red and blue. This duo have performed together on the canvas, summoning the ghosts of Rosso Fiorentino’s angel and Antonio del Pollaiulo’s Deianira and Nessus onto a new stage created from variations of colour temperature and orientation. Faint traces of these figures are just about recognisable as memes gesturing towards their painterly re-circulation.
the critics the gaps (acoustic guitars), 2024
Oil on linen
30 x 40 cm
the critics the gaps (acoustic guitars), 2024
Oil on linen
90 x 120 cm
An age that has lost its gestures is, for this reason, obsessed by them. For human beings who have lost every sense of naturalness, each single gesture becomes a destiny.
Giorgio Agamben, ‘Notes on Gesture’, 1992
LP (Landscape Portrait, actors), 2024
Oil on linen
135 x 175 cm
LP (Landscape Portrait, actors), 2024
Oil on linen
160 x 210 cm
Appendice per una supplica, 1973
3 parts, photo and drawing on paper
97.8 x 44.5 cm
Le mie parole e tu?, 1973
2 parts, photo and drawing on paper, mounted on board
35.5 x 13 cm
Ketty La Rocca proposed that gesture replace language, the latter being a patriarchal construct. In 1970’s Florence she produced works derived from photographic images of hands making signs, gradually reducing these images to drawings composed of sequences of tiny handwritten words. Words become images and images become language. Her earlier cut-and-paste collages make nonsense of found words and meaning from found images, objecting to the undermining of women both by contemporary popular culture and by the Catholic church.
Provini 2, 1974
4 parts, photo and drawing on paper, mounted on board
42 x 47 cm
A special place where daily actions unfold
the false conciousness of language that fuels universal paranoia
deprives any alternative gesture of meaning
flattens any prominence of behavior
threatens any extraneous sentiment
like a conveyor belt along which parallel meanings are forced to run
to cry “help!” I have to say “help!’
in other words!
In this action that I would call conjugation
I am an example to myself and to others of a total enslavement
to language, to its most enticing infrastructures,
I force myself to speak through a refined example
the others that take part in the action combine both a real
drama and my interior drama, my relation with the medium:
captivating but sterile: language does not determine even
illusory
freedom, but proliferates contagiously, creates victims that conjugate
their very own condition and define it “you”.
Ketty La Rocca, published in Data, year V, no. 16/17, June/August 1975, pp. 68/69
Qualcosa di vecchio, 1964
Collage on paper
44.5 x 29 cm
Self Portrait, 1993
Vintage silver gelatin print
Print size 13.5 x 10.5 cm
Image size 8 x 6 cm
Edition 2 of 3
Ajamu X has worked with black-and-white photography for over 30 years both for documentary purposes, and to challenge perceptions of black queer bodies. Calling attention to both the physicality of the photograph and the material processes of image-production in the darkroom, Ajamu X celebrates the beauty and joy of the erotic. He does this in an arena where the work of black and LGBTQ+ photographers is often appraised largely on the basis of its subject matter and sociopolitical context. The particularities of the image-making process are all too frequently overlooked in the face of challenging content and Ajamu X’s joyous embrace of the photographic medium reclaims this balance.
CJ, 1992
Vintage silver gelatin print, selenium toned
Print size: 11 x 13.5 cm
Image size: 6 x 8.5 cm
Edition 1 of 3
Aura, 1992
Vintage silver gelatin print, selenium toned
Print size: 11 x 13.5 cm
Image size: 6 x 8.5 cm
Edition 2 of 3
Muse, 2020
Bromide digital print
32 x 22 cm
Edition 4 of 8
A Sensual Chorus of Gestures IX, 2024
Platinum print on Tosa Washi Paper
41 x 51 cm
Edition 3 + 1 AP
In Ajamu’s work, gesture is the most productive way to think about the Black queer body because it moves us beyond the limits of representation and identity, and encourages us to resist the urge to interpret an image as being “about” X. What if the one-time contact between you and A that means nothing but put a smile on your face is all there is? What if gesture is all there is?
madison moore
A Sensual Chorus of Gestures XVI, 2024
Platinum print on Tosa Washi Paper
41 x 51 cm
Edition 3 + 1 AP