READ MY LIPS Curated by Dean Sameshima
January 26 ˆ February 23, 2008 Opening Saturday, January 26, 2008, 7 ˆ 10 p.m.
The Physique body ˆ Anonymous, Bruce of LA, Bob Mizer, Eugen Sandow, Tamostu Yato The Fetishized body ˆ Nobuyoshi Araki, Tamotsu Yato, Tom of Finland The Deteriorating body ˆ Matthias Herrmann, John Kleckner, Terence Koh The Ethnic body ˆ Colt Studios, Tamostu Yato The Critical body ˆ Dan Colen, Amie Dicke, Dorothy Iannone, Bruce LaBruce, Kirstine Roepstorff The Angry body ˆ Kathryn Garcia, Dan Colen/Joe Bradley The Sentimental body ˆ Nobuyoshi Araki, Dan Attoe, Dorothy Iannone, Paul Lee “Read My Lips”, initially a term immortalized by former president of the United States, George W. Bush in 1988 at the National Republican Convention as he accepted his nomination. Very soon after, used/appropriated by the American AIDS activist group Gran Fury, an ad hoc art collective (some autonomous and sometimes anonymous artists and designers) who exploited the power of art to end the AIDS crisis. They called themselves Gran Fury after the Plymouth model of automobile used by the New York City Police Department. This exhibition was conceived with the simple yet powerful Gran Fury poster of the late 1980s – Read My Lips – which brings to mind how the use of imagery related to the body, but also textual information (or both) is and has been used by artists addressing societal, sexual and political concerns. Dan Attoe, Dan Colen, Dan Colen/Joe Bradley, Bruce LaBruce, Amie Dicke, Kathryn Garcia, Matthias Herrmann, Dorothy Iannone, John Kleckner, Terence Koh, Paul Lee, Kirstine Roepstorff and Tom of Finland, Nobuyoshi Araki, Bruce of LA, Tamotsu Yato, and Colt Studios.