Last weekend saw the 40th anniversary Berlin iteration of the Tom of Finland Foundation Arts & Culture Festival at the iconic Berghain. Over 100 artists were involved with screenings, talks, and parties. Below are some installation images from in and around the festival.
My London gallery James Freeman Gallery opens the Pleasure Gardens on June 6th. I’ll be showing two works alongside three of the other gallery artists, Guillermo Martin Bermejo, James Mortimer, and Matt Smith, and I hope to see you there at the opening reception.
The Pleasure Gardens of 18th century London were a destination not just for entertainment but for social freedom – in 1732 Vauxhall Gardens saw the earliest verified public appearance of a gay man in London, John Cooper, better known as Princess Seraphina. The gardens’ roots, however, were much grittier: in his diaries of the 1660s Samuel Pepys describes them as a place of “boys doing tumbling tricks” and drunken visitors seeking sexual favours. This exhibition explores the legacy of pleasure gardens from a gay male perspective as spaces of social and sexual liberty, through the work of four contemporary artists: Matt Smith, Guillermo Martin Bermejo, Stuart Sandford, and James Mortimer.
Matt Smith’s artworks reconfigure traditional aesthetic forms from a queer perspective to look at how accepted histories underpin social limitations. The two re-worked textiles here examine the eighteenth century love of pastoralism and its implicit sense of natural order. Geometric patterns embedded into bucolic scenes suggest how seemingly benign cultural narratives involve rigid rules of what is deemed acceptable. His black parian ceramics similarly rework neoclassical sculptural forms but undermine them with suggestive marine shapes, two disembodied spouts joined by a string of pearls oozing a seaside sauciness beneath the veneer of refined elegance.
Guillermo Martin Bermejo’s drawings describe a romantic inner world populated by remembered faces, often creatives or artists, whom Guillermo displaces into the mountains near his home north of Madrid. His scenes thus become become part fact, part fiction, glimpses of an inner realm that he draws onto pages rescued from old books as if bringing forgotten stories back to life. The group of drawings here all orbit around the theme of cruising, with romantic figures glimpsed in light-speckled glades, half-hidden in a forest. The natural space is here a place of enchantment, of anonymity, allure, and discovery.
Stuart Sandford’s sculptures look at the classical tradition of the ideal human form, reinterpreting it through the gay male gaze and contemporary 3D modelling. What was once a philosophical abstract, the ideal concept versus imperfect flesh, is in Stuart’s work articulated as a polished template 3D scanned and cast in bronze. The Wrestler/s here presents a naked man grappling with himself like a feature in a quintessential classical garden, channelling the raw energy and animal urges that natural spaces give rein to. Stuart’s painting ‘Self Portrait with Leo #1’ sees this aggression turn into lust, rendered in Polaroid flash-lit chiaroscuro.
James Mortimer’s paintings describe a natural world whose inhabitants are unrestricted by social convention or self-consciousness. His settings are idyllic, a subconscious world of raw unfettered instincts. In this bucolic land the inhabitants are driven by the twin urges of sex and violence, characteristics they share with the animals on equal terms. Dogs are savage; lambs slaughtered; horses on the point of being so. Amidst this the humans lounge in blissful oblivion, or fight amongst themselves as fires break out in the distance. The pleasure garden here is a dreamlike landscape, symbolic of untrammelled human nature.
‘Pleasure Gardens’ opens on Thursday 6 June, 6:30 – 8:30pm. To register for the PDF preview please email the gallery.
I’ll be taking part in this years Tom of Finland 2024 Art & Culture Festival in Berlin at the legendary Berghain. The festival runs the weekend of May 31st through June 2nd and I’ll be showing some Polaroid based works as well as taking part in a talk with my fellow artists. Tickets are available now via the link above as well as the full schedule of events, talks, and screenings.
A few installation shots and snaps from the opening of Carne Sagrada (Sacred Meat), fundraising exhibition for @manos.amigues here in CDMX. Featuring unique artworks and prints by local and international artists including:
Alejandro Ruiz
Andrés Gudiño
Antonio Zaragoza
Bruce LaBruce
Donovan Quiroz
ektor García
Fabián Chairez
Fidel Blanco
G del Diablo
Gio Black Peter
Joaquín Fierro
Lechedevirgen
Óscar Sánchez Gómez
Raul de Nieves
Ricardo Velmor
Rubén Esparza
Slava Mogutin
Stuart Sandford
Tony Solis
All proceeds benefit Manos Amigues, a community dining room and LGBTTTQI+ cultural centre. Exhibition curated by @slavamogutin & @perrasdemuseo
Manos Amigues
Pedro Moreno #113
Col. Guerrero. Ciudad de México
A few installation views of Pleasure Boy which us now on view in Zurich.
Thrilled to announce that my first solo presentation in Switzerland opens January 5th in Zurich! I’ll be showing selected works from my ongoing Polaroid Collages series (2018-TBA) and my Polaroid Collages - LA/CDMX series (2022).
Titled Pleasure Boy, the exhibition is curated by Steven Anggrek for Anggrek Agency and runs through march 30th.
The 20th edition of My Gay Eye / Mein schwules Auge is now available and features a few pages of my work and my life-size Aldocutio (Sean Ford) sculpture. Grab a copy via their website: www.mygayeye.com
400 pages with works by more than 80 international artists among them Johnny Abbate, Henning von Berg, Sabatino Cersosimo, Norbert Bisky, Male Shibari, Slava Mogutin, Josef Wolfgang Ohlert, Ohm Phanphiroj, Sal Salandra, Peter Schmid, Stanley Stellar, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tom of Finland and many more. Exclusive text contributions by Michael Ampersant, Jan Gympel, Thomas Luthardt, Brane Mozetič, Felice Picano, Steven Reigns, Jens Rosteck, Michael Sollorz, Edmund White and more. (Texts in both German and English.)
The first version of my new sculpture The Wrestler/s is now available. Inspired by the lost Greek bronze sculpture The Wrestlers (also known as The Two Wrestlers, The Uffizi Wrestlers or The Pancrastinae), this updated version emphasises the inherent sexuality and tension of that form by repeating the figure (the same model was 3D scanned in both the "top" and "bottom" positions to create the work), giving him both dominant and submissive roles.
Created using 3D scanning and modelling techniques, this edition is cast in bronze and is available in a painted white edition as well as a classic brown patinated edition to reflect the original ancient bronze. Both are in editions of 5 and are 30.4 × 14.7 × 24.3 cm / 12 x 5.8 x 9.6 in. Two editions remain of the painted white version and four in the classic brown patina. A larger version will also be available early next year. If you're interested in this larger version, please do get in touch.
This weekend in Los Angeles at the Soho Warehouse sees the LA iteration of the 2023 Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival. Tickets available here: www.tomoffinland.org/artfair
The Festival is ToFF’s yearly programming effort to bring together artists, galleries and patrons from all over the globe in a socially friendly setting, so that they can network as well as buy and sell works. I’ll have a new print available as well as a new zine. For those of you not able to attend, you can purchase a copy of the zine online via this link.
This new zine continues my exploration of the ‘selfie’ which I began in 2007 with my celebrated Cumfaces series. These images were generated by entering the prompt ‘photo of a young man in his underwear taking a selfie in the mirror’.
On new now and running through September 16th, Désir (Desire) is a group exhibition at Instinct Berlin. Curated by Yves de Brabaner and Eric le Rouge. I’m showing three works from my Polaroid Collages - LA/CDMX (2022) series, installation views below. More info: www.instinct.berlin
A digital limited edition version of my new sculpture The Wrestler/s is now available via Sedition Art. This version is rendered in pink fleshy Carrara marble in an edition of 30.
HD video, duration 2:40, 27 editions remaining. Price increases as the edition sells.
On view in Los Angeles and online via Artsy is 𝘋𝘦𝘤𝘰𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘈𝘮𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘯𝘢'𝘴 𝘘𝘶𝘦𝘦𝘳 𝘚𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘣𝘪𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘦𝘴, a group exhibition curated by Steve Galindo and Arushi Kapoor. Participating artists:
Evangeline Adalyrion, Alannah Farrell, Stuart Sandford, Little Ricky aka Ricky Sension, Mia Weiner, Sara Sandoval, Duane Paul, Naruki Kukita, Sophia Gasporian, Joey Brock, Miguel Reyes Angel, Ruben Esparza
Viewable only by appointment: steve@thestyleguyde.com
www.artsy.net/show/arushi-gallery-decoding-americanas-queer-sensibilities
Now on view at ALMANAQUE fotográfica in Mexico City
Camilo Barboza-Soto, Venezuela
Charles-Henry Bédué, France
Paola Bragado, Spain (collab. w/Salón Silicón)
Jesús León, México
Adolfo Pérez Butrón, México
Stuart Sandford, UK
Eloy Valtierra, México
Yvonne Venegas, México
Diego Torres-Cano, Mexico (special guest)
In the film At home directed by Gus Van Sant & Alessandro Michele for Gucci in 2020, the philosopher Paul B. Preciado appears on the scene inside a television. His character, reminiscent of Orwell's Big Brother, speaks directly to the starring character: the actress Silvia Calderoni:
The sexual difference was invented as an anatomical fiction in the 16th century... and the concepts of homosexuality and heterosexuality, barely in 1860... We have been built throughout patriarchal history as monsters, madmen, degenerates, hysterical women, deviant, disabled, sicks, mentals… now the monsters take the floor.
Artists who, beyond their position or identity, have risked for decades to show the reality of sexual diversity, and their dissidences, have built the foundations of a freer present, conquering rights that democratic societies enjoy as a whole, taking them for granted.
The exhibition Gender : Blurred brings together a collection of works from well established and emerging international artists exploring the notion of gender from the photographic perspective. From different angles, formats and times, the dynamism of a term that resists the static is confirmed.
For more information and to request a list of available works please visit almanaquefotografica.com.
Camilo Barboza-Soto, Venezuela
Charles-Henry Bédué, Francia
Paola Bragado, España (colabo c/Salón Silicón)
Jesús León, México
Adolfo Pérez Butrón, México
Stuart Sandford, UK
Eloy Valtierra, México
Yvonne Venegas, México
Diego Torres-Cano, México (invitado especial)
En el film At home que Gus Van Sant y Alessandro Michele dirigieron para Gucci en 2020, el filósofo Paul B. Preciado aparece en escena dentro de un televisor. Su personaje, que recuerda al Big Brother de Orwell, le habla directamente a la protagonista, la actriz Silvia Calderoni:
La diferencia sexual fue inventada como ficción anatómica en el siglo XVI... los conceptos de homosexualidad y heterosexualidad, apenas en 1860... Hemos sido construidos durante la historia patriarcal como monstruos, locos, degenerados, mujeres histéricas, desviados, discapacitados, enfermos mentales… ahora los monstruos tomamos la palabra.
Los artistas, que más allá de su postura o identidad, se han arriesgado desde hace décadas a mostrar la realidad de la diversidad sexual y sus disidencias, han construido los cimientos de un presente más libre, conquistando derechos que las sociedades democráticas disfrutan en su conjunto y dándolas por hecho.
La muestra Gender : Blurred reúne un conjunto de obras de destacados artistas internacionales de trayectoria establecida y emergente, que exploran la noción de género a partir de lo fotográfico. Desde diversos ángulos, formatos y épocas se constata el dinamismo de un término que se resiste a lo estático.
Para obtener más información y solicitar una lista de obras disponibles, visite almanaquefotografica.com.
My new book Polaroid Collages - LA/CDMX is now available to pre-order here with Men On Paper Art. This book collects the entire series of 36 works executed in 2022 and is available as an Artist Edition (of 25) with a signed Polaroid print of the cover image and also as a standard open edition.
Originally commissioned by the New Collection, the series builds on my existing ongoing Polaroid Collages series (2018 - TBA) but focuses on the two cities in which I've spent the majority of the last 10 years, Los Angeles and Mexico City. Creating a dialogue between these two vast, imposing, sometimes impenetrable mega cities, stems from two things, first my love for my adopted homes, and second, that as an outsider looking in, and depicts the people and places in both cities that continue to inspire and draw me there.
Marco Paez from The Fahey/Klein Gallery in Los Angeles has written the foreword to the book and texts are in both English and Spanish.
Polaroid Collages - LA/CDMX
2023
Soft cover
84 pages
21 x 21 cm / 8.2 x 8.2 in
Artists edition $300 / £250 (plus shipping)
Standard edition $50 / £40 (plus shipping)
Thank you to the many folk who came to out to the opening night of Bribones Libertines: Jotxs y recuerdos in Mexico City. Below are a few installation and opening night photographs. The exhibition runs through March 11th and you can find all the information here.
Pequeños Bribones invites you to Bribones Libertines: Jotxs y recuerdos on the 10th and 11th of February, 2023 at Cerrada de La Paz 37, Colonia Escandón, Mexico City (the opening will be held from 7 pm to 11 pm on February 10th / with an open house on the 11th, from 1 pm to 5 pm).
SPANISH TEXT BELOW
This is an exhibition curated by Tony Solis, photographer and editor-in-chief of Y- NOT Magazine and creator of Pequeños Bribones (art gallery). On this occasion, the work of three artists invited to collaborate is exhibited: Slava Mogutin (Russia), Rubén Esparza (United States) and Stuart Sandford (United Kingdom), together with Donovan Quiroz, a Mexican photographer, and Tony Solis. Bribones Libertines (Jotxs y recuerdos) addresses gender dissidence and new LGBTIQ+ masculinities from the multidisciplinary perspective and the contrast of these five artists, whose work ranges from queer documentary photography to disruptive poetry and activism.
Thus, the exhibition articulates the works of a lifetime (and the experience they entail) with an invitation to explore the non- binary phenomenon from new angles in the context of the post-pandemic. Body language, and the role that sensations play in said exploration, is a constant that runs through the work and that uses different techniques that clearly captures the current climate of what the "liquidity" of gender means in the West. The work goes beyond the limits of what is considered artistic and even leads to a particular activism. Such is the case of Slava Mogutin, a Russian-American multimedia artist, author, and activist exiled from Russia for his outspoken queer writing and activism, among his projects are seven books of writings in Russian, three monographs of photography and two illustrated collections of poetry publish in the US, his work examines the notions of displacement and identity, pride and shame, devotion and disaffection, love and hate. Rubén Esparza, for his part, portrays the events of the non-binary scene in Los Angeles, with pieces such as CUNT (2011) and Transexual Jesus (2019), who’s also the founder and director of the Queer Biennial, an international survey of LGBTQ+ art and culture.
Building on his ongoing Polaroid Collages (2018-TBA) series, self labelled as “instant sculptures”, Stuart Sandford focuses on the male body and ideas of space/place/belonging to present works that explore the rawness of non-binary sexuality and chosen family.. On the other hand, Donovan Quiroz, who is co-director of Y- NOT Magazine, lightly synthesizes the sensuality and harshness of the homoerotic, from the portrait of limbs, bodies, gazes, and shadows that make his work a currentproposal on dissidence sex in Latin America.
All this in conjunction with the pieces and curatorship of Tony Solis, a photographer who has worked and collaborated in national and international printed publications and has participated in multiple art fairs in different countries.
As a collaborative piece, all the participating artists will install a large collage across an entire wall, creating a huge shout of dialogue between all these disparate queer voices in real time before the opening.
Pequeños Bribones te invita a Bribones Libertines: Jotxs y recuerdos este 10 y 11 de febrero de 2023 en Cerrada de La Paz 37, Colonia Escandón, Ciudad de México (la inauguración será el día 10, de 7pm a 11pm / habrá open house el día 11, de 1pm a 5pm).
Esta es una exposición curada por Tony Solis, fotógrafo y editor en jefe de Y- NOT Magazine y creador de Pequeños Bribones (galería de arte). En esta ocasión se exhibe el trabajo de tres artistas invitados a colaborar: Slava Mogutin (Rusia), Rubén Esparza (Estados Unidos) y Stuart Sandford (Reino Unido), junto a Donovan Quiroz, fotógrafo mexicano, y Tony Solis.
Bribones Libertines (Jotxs y recuerdos) aborda las disidencias de género y las nuevas masculinidades LGBTIQ+ desde la perspectiva multidisciplinaria y el contraste de estos cinco artistas, cuyo trabajo va desde la fotografía documental queer hasta la poesía disruptiva y el activismo.
Así, la exposición articula las obras de toda una vida (y la experiencia que conllevan) con una invitación a explorar el fenómeno no binario desde nuevos ángulos en el contexto de la pos-pandemia. El lenguaje corporal, y el papel que juegan las sensaciones en dicha exploración, es una constante que recorre la obra y que utiliza distintas técnicas que captan claramente el panorama actual de lo que significa la “liquidez” del género en Occidente. El trabajo va más allá de los límites de lo que se considera artístico e incluso conduce a un activismo particular. Tal es el caso de Slava Mogutin, artista ruso-americano, autor y activista exiliado de Rusia por su franca escritura y activismo queer, entre sus proyectos se encuentran siete libros de escritos en ruso, tres monografías de fotografía y dos colecciones ilustradas de poesía publicadas en Estados Unidos. Su obra examina las nociones de desplazamiento e identidad, orgullo y vergüenza, devoción y desamor, amor y odio. Rubén Esparza, por su parte, retrata el devenir de la escena no binaria de Los Ángeles, con piezas como CUNT (2011) y Transexual Jesus (2019), además fundador y director de la Bienal Queer, una encuesta internacional de arte y cultura LGBTQ+. Stuart Sandford se centra en el cuerpo masculino y las ideas de espacio/lugar/pertenencia para presentar obras que registran la crudeza de la sexualidad no binaria, presentando el proyecto Polaroid Collages autodenominado como “esculturas instantáneas” que viene construyendo desde 2018 a la fecha. Por su parte, Donovan Quiroz, quien es codirector de Y- NOT MAGAZINE sintetiza con ligereza la sensualidad y aspereza de lo homoerótico, a partir del retrato de extremidades, cuerpos, miradas y sombras que hacen de su obra una propuesta actual sobre las disidencias sexuales en América Latina.
Todo esto en conjunto con las piezas y la curaduría de Tony Solis, fotógrafo que ha trabajado y colaborado en publicaciones impresas nacionales e internacionales y ha participado en múltiples ferias de arte en diferentes países.
Como pieza colaborativa, todos los artistas participantes instalarán un gran collage en toda una pared, creando un gran grito de diálogo entre todas estas voces queer dispares en tiempo real antes de la inauguración.
The sixth submission of a self-tape audition for a planned feature film about the life and death of Antinous.
Presented by James Freeman Gallery and Artsy, an online exhibition of selected works from my Polaroid Collages - LA/CDMX (2022) series is online now and runs through December 1st. All the info below.
James Freeman Gallery is pleased to present Polaroid Collages – LA/CDMX, a collection of new editions by the British artist Stuart Sandford. The imagery for these works are taken from a group of Polaroid collages originally commissioned by the New Collection, and explore the experience of living in both Los Angeles and Cuidad de Mexico as adopted homes.
Polaroid as a medium allows a moment to be captured and stored in unique physical form. This inevitably makes the photographs themselves special: precious, like the memories they hold, something which in turn we look to hold onto. In creating his collages, Stuart cuts across this special character and ruptures that unique object, but as a means to create something new, much like the process of leaving the past behind to find new life in new cities. Through juxtaposing scenes of intimacy with snapshots of the urban environment, Stuart’s works speak of the romance we can feel for places just as much as we do for people. The works in this collection take those unique collage images and enlarge them into archival prints in editions of 3. The original collages are also available on request.
For a full list of available works, please email info@jamesfreemangallery.com.
Some installation view of NGXX: Twenty years of the Naughton Gallery on view now in Belfast and running through the end of January 2023.
A few photographs by Martin Perry of the incredible inaugural London edition of the Tom of Finland Arts & Culture Festival which took place the weekend of October 8/9 at Second Home in London. What a pleasure and an inspiration to connect/reconnect in the flesh with so many beautiful, fierce, queer artists and creatives. As the tag line went, Tom really does unite.
