MATT LIPPS | CAROLINE MAY
November 26 - December 23, 2008
The Apartment is pleased to announce a two-person exhibition of photographic work by Matt Lipps and Caroline May, the second in a series of ambitious projects in collaboration with OZON, Athens. Both artists explore issues of identity, sexuality and desire in relation to the photographic medium.
Matt Lipps takes inspiration from the iconography of pornography; he appropriates sexually explicit images from an archive of 70s gay porn, which he then manipulates by cutting them up and re-photographing them with a large -format camera, thereby enlarging the printed matter of the original source material and pointing out their magazine materiality. This representation of representation shifts the mood from a 70s post-Stonewall sexual liberation to the current post-AIDS fragmentation of desire. His large diptych, Untitled (black space) and Untitled (white space) is a comment on the positive/negative photographic space as well as an attempt to reclaim queer space.
Caroline May takes pictures of hustlers in parks. In her new series The Ramble, she follows a gay hustler in a cruising area of Central Park, NY. Not staged and to a large extent based on her relationship with her subject, May's photographs focus on the customary re-enactment of stereotypes of masculinity that are commonly embraced by both heterosexual and gay mainstream culture. The artist resolves to photography to question established modes of behavior as well as the language that validates them.
May is not a detached observer relying on the decisive moment for each picture, but actively creates 'situations' permeated by her post feminist gaze. The poser is asked to perform his social, sexual identity, thus relating photography with the death of self and the re-invention of a new identity on offer for consumption.
Matt Lipps (b.1975) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Recent museum exhibitions include Off Hours at the New Wight Gallery, UCLA, Photography Unbound at the Robert V. Fullerton Museum, San Bernardino; Rendering Gender at Truman State University Art Gallery, Missouri. His work was also included in the infamous Log Cabin exhibition organized by Jeffrey Uslip at Artists Space, New York, NY.
Caroline May (b.1975) currently lives and works in Athens, Greece. She had a solo exhibition with the gallery in 2006; recent museum exhibitions include Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London (2007), Heterotopias:The 1st Thessaloniki Biennale, Greece (2007), Crossing the Borders, Greek State Museum Thessaloniki, Greece (2006), Identities and their Topographies, Centre of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, Spain (2006).
Matt Lipps | Caroline May, organised by The Apartment and presented at OZON opens on Wednesday, November 26 and continues through December 23, 2008. The exhibition is part of the Athens Photo Festival 2008. It is open Thursday through Saturday from 12 to 6 pm or by appointment. OZON is located at 50-52 Valtetsiou Street in Exarhia, Athens.
Image:
Caroline May, The Ramble#3, 2007
C-print
30 x 30 cm, Edition of 3 + 1AP
C-print
30 x 30 cm, Edition of 3 + 1AP
Courtesy of The Apartment, Athens
The Apartment
21, Voulis St
GR - 105 63
Athens
Greece
T +30 210 3215469
OZON
50-52 Valtetsiou Street
Exarhia
Athens
T +30 210 3634 009
50-52 Valtetsiou Street
Exarhia
Athens
T +30 210 3634 009
Comments