Nina Childress' "Unisexe" @ Galerie Art Concept

 
Vue d'exposition / Installation view Nina Childress : Unisexe, 2023. Art : Concept, Paris. © Nina Childress, Adagp, 2023. Courtesy the Artist and Art : Concept, Paris. Photo Romain Darnaud.

Vue d'exposition / Installation view Nina Childress : Unisexe, 2023. Art : Concept, Paris. © Nina Childress, Adagp, 2023. Courtesy the Artist and Art : Concept, Paris. Photo Romain Darnaud.

For her first exhibition, Unisexe, at Art : Concept, Nina Childress signs her history of desire in painting. Here, boys and girls with long seventies’ hair, rockers, and groupies are all united by sex. Nina Childress depicts this still virgin moment, when characters fantasize about one another in a unisex relationship of mirroring and projection. There are no scenes of concerts—instead, her depictions are of the backstage. These rockers and groupies are isolated, each one portrayed on his/her canvas, in a music-poster situation. It is a matter of pose for a sexual distance. They do not have sex. Not yet. They look at each other, desire in their eyes, which are very wide open.

Text by Laurent Goumarre

Unisexe is on view through July 22 at Art : Concept, 4 PASSAGE SAINTE-AVOYE 75003 PARIS, FRANCE

 

Mark Verabioff's Poolside Drive-by @ Team (bungalow) In Venice Beach

Long before the current administration’s ascendancy, the wheels had been turning in favor of hostile mechanisms of control. The blatant aggression and fascist broism of the present, however, have thrown into stark relief how identity and the gaze of another can be weaponized and internalized. Mark Verabioff’s practice is borne of the conjoined dynamics of identity and imaging and proposes self-definition as a position of resistance that can challenge cultural and political power structures. Existing at the intersection of autobiography and community, Poolside Drive-by is the mapping of an internal topography that tells us much about the artist’s choices and frames of reference, but also describes the kind of world in which he finds himself. Vulnerable, humorous, both reverent and irreverant, the work is grounded in Verabioff’s appropriative processing of cultural products and pushes against strictures of authorship, authority, and objectification. The show’s title, Poolside Drive-by, juxtaposes positions of blithe passivity and ruthless retaliation; when they go low, kick ‘em while they’re down.

Pooside Drive-by is on view through February 10 @ Team (bungalow) 306 Windward Avenue Venice, CA 90291. Image courtesy of the artist and team (bungalow). Photo: Jeff McLane.