Entering the space, visitors are greeted with a large (93 x 95\u201d to be exact) photograph titled Playboy<\/em> by Jose Joaqin Figueroa depicting a nude, hairy man splayed out on red satin sheets in a typical pin-up pose (featured). The photograph is a smart choice as the first piece that visitors see since it immediately reminds us of the theme the exhibition endeavors to explore.<\/p>\n The next piece that caught my attention was one by Lucas Michael. In a light box, Michael has placed hand drawn book title pages from 1958 through 1995 that boast such titles as Homosexuality: It\u2019s Causes and Cure and Male Homosexuals: Their Problems and Adaptations.<\/em> Michael\u2019s piece is poignant and witty; one is reminded of how far the culture has come in terms of acceptance, and yet at the same time, the piece points out how much further we can and should go.<\/p>\n My favorite work at the show was Jacolby Satterwhite\u2019s bizarre video loop, Lactate<\/em>. The video features, among other scenes, two, muddied, masked figures in a forest, dancing and spraying digitally rendered fluid from bra-like contraptions on their chests. I recognized the clunky, digital, pre-2004 aesthetic from a video in Charlie White\u2019s collaborative series Music for Sleeping Children<\/em> directed by Satterwhite. Satterwhite\u2019s piece in Gay<\/em> is equal parts funny and unsettling and his style reminded me instantly of a more self-aware Wendy Vainity.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Other highlights from the exhibit include Troy Michie\u2019s mixed media sculpture, Beware, My Body, My Soul,<\/em> which recalls Ellen Gallagher\u2019s mixed media collages and drawings. Cacy Forgenie\u2019s photographs treats the culture of gay black men with both respect and humor. A series of paintings by Steve Locke uses minimalist composition and muted colors to depict the preludes to clandestine sexual encounters between men in public bathrooms and locker rooms. The idea of such an \u201cindecent\u201d subject matter being elevated to the status of painting is an interesting and complex one and one that complicates the history and tradition of fine art.<\/p>\n Many of the works seem to examine personal anxieties caused by the culture at large, such as Carlo Quispe\u2019s ink drawings of various Health Centers around the boroughs. Exteriors loom menacingly while young men sit nervously in clinical waiting rooms. The uninviting nature of a medical setting is accurately captures by Quispe\u2019s cartoon-style.<\/p>\n The last pieces I was struck by were Hector Silva\u2019s explicit pencil drawings. Erotic images of muscled Latino men populate Silva\u2019s visual language. I\u2019m not completely sure of or convinced by these drawings, but I remembered them vividly when I left the gallery and for this I must give Silva credit. They certainly fit perfectly within the exhibit and punctuate the show with an eroticism and humor that dominates throughout.<\/p>\n Gay<\/em> opened on February 5th and runs through May 7th at The Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College in the Bronx, 450 Grand Concourse at 149th street.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Author | Annie Malamet The Longwood Art Gallery at Hostos Community College in the Bronx is currently hosting an exhibit titled Gay, which \u201cexamines the cultural shift that has taken place in identity during the last decade by looking at the cultural production of gay male artists of color from 2003-2013.\u201d Curated by Ivan Monforte\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3123,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[45,379,176,454,452,39,455,451,453,450,135,134,38,327,307],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-art","tag-art","tag-annie-malamet","tag-bronx","tag-carlo-quispe","tag-exhibition","tag-gay","tag-hector-silva","tag-hostos-community-college","tag-jose-joaqin-figueroa","tag-longwood-art-gallery","tag-posture","tag-posture-magazine","tag-queer","tag-troy-michie","tag-visual-art-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/gay-1-1.jpg?fit=1024%2C792","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6QBV8-Oj","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3119"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3131,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3119\/revisions\/3131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3123"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3119"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Troy](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/posturemag.com\/online\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/gay-2-1.jpg\")
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