Issue No. 231: In the Garden

Deep Red Holes

For his second solo show at Western Exhibitions, “In the Garden,” Dutes Miller presents an installation of new works on paper and sculptures that invokes an ecstatic vision of nature in which homosexuality is not only included but is the norm. Miller re-imagines Eden as gay cruising grounds, a carnal paradise populated by homosexual fauna that hunt one another amongst phallic flora. Although playful and imaginative, his recent work critically engage with the mythologies surrounding human sexuality.
 
The show opens on Friday, December 14 with a free public reception from 5 to 8pm.

Continuing his exploration of appropriated sexual imagery, Miller’s new works on paper consist of pages torn from gay porn magazines, which the artist has altered by painting over the men with acrylic and gouache. In the resulting images, the figures sometimes stand out starkly, other times they disappear into their environments. The effect is whimsical, evocative, and eerie. The anonymous figures, identifiable mainly by the color with which each is individually embellished, evoke aspects of gay sexual practices such as cruising and the coordination of desire by strict typology. These works also allude to the continuing invisibility of actual homosexual desire in mainstream media despite increased acceptance of gay culture.

Miller’s gallery of monochromatic men overlooks a garden with an Astroturf floor, planted with strange fungi and over which distended fruit dangle. These fleshy plant forms comprise clusters of cast wax fingers and objects produced by filling condoms with silicon or plaster. A fountain, “Lingam” provides the centerpiece of Miller’s polymorphous perverse patch, its title referencing phallic sculptures that represent the Hindu deity, Shiva. Other works on view augment the charged atmosphere of sexuality, nature, and spirituality. “Dicks In,” for instance, shows a collaged arrangement of anuses in the form of a mandala. In several works, such as “Target Practice #2” animal forms predominate, suggesting a zoology of queer desire.

Dutes Miller’s first solo show at Western Exhibitions in 2009 was reviewed on Artforum.com, Time Out Chicago, New City and the Chicago Tribune and was named one of the “Top 5 Shows of the Year” by the Chicago Art Review. Miller’s work has been included in exhibitions at White Flag Projects in St. Louis (reviews here and here) and the Ukranian Museum of Art, 40000 and COMA, all in Chicago His collaborative work with his husband Stan Shellabarger, as Miller & Shellabarger, won a 2008 Artadia Award and a 2007 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation award.. Miller & Shellabarger have been written about in Artforum.com, Art & Auction, Frieze, Artnet, The Art Newspaper, Flash Art, TimeOut Chicago, and the Chicago Sun-Times. Miller received a BFA from Illinois State University and is an accomplished pastry chef. He lives and works in Chicago.

From official press release. The gallery is located at 845 W. Washington Blvd. 2nd. Floor. Chicago, IL.

Issue No. 218: (Tranny) Napoleon Bonaparte Turns 243 Today!

Napoleon on his Imperial throne wearing his laurel leaf crown.
Painting by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres in 1806.

b. Ajaccio, Corsica, 1769. Believe what you will, but stories to the effect that the emperor of France was not the man he was cracked up to be have circulated for more than a century and a half. The basis for these stories seems to have been the post-mortem report of one Dr. Henry, revealing the "progressive feminization" that Napoleon's body had undergone through the years: "The whole surface of the body was deeply covered with fat. Over the sternum, where generally the bone is very superficial, the fat was upwards of an inch deep and an inch and a half or two inches on the abdomen. There was scarcely any hair on the body, and that of the head was thin, fine and silky. The whole genital system (very small) seemed to exhibit a physical cause for the absence of sexual desire, and the chastity which had been stated to have characterized the deceased [Napoleon had been kept prisoner on St. Helena for seven years]. The skin was noticed to be very white and delicate, as were the hands and arms. Indeed the whole body was slender and effeminate. The pubis much resembled the mons vernis in women. The muscles of the chest were small, the shoulders narrow, and the hips wide." So much for 19th-century science.

From The Gay Book of Days by Martin Grief. 1982.

Issue No. 204 Wendy O. Williams Versus Beth Ditto

Issue No. 196: Samuel Morris Steward

Issue No. 195: Dead Queen Paul Lynde Would Have Been 86 Wednesday.

Paul Lynde, b. Mt Vernon, Ohio, 1926. How does one pigeon-hole the show-biz persona of Paul Lynde? Perhaps it's not incorrect to say that he was Franklin Pangborn fifty years later, given the license to say that Hollywood Code prevented Panghorn from ever saying, even though you knew, just looking at his face, that he was capable of saying it. Or perhaps Lynde was Franklin Pangborn crossed with Eve Arden, women always having been given the opportunity fro comic bitchery denied men becasue in women such behavior was seen to be "in character". Whatever he was, Lynde was pretty funny at it. And he was known, on more than one occassion, to have shocked the hair-roller set with his acid queen-like tongue. "Why do motorcyclists wear leather?" he was asked on Hollywood Squares. "Because chiffon wrinkles too easily, that's why." That was Paul Lynde in our time. Franklin Pangborn wouldn't have been permitted to know what a motorcyclist was no less to have been known anything about leather. But he might have been seen ironing the chiffon. That's the difference that time makes.

Paul Lynde, Gemini

Franklin Pangborn, b. [January 23] Newark, New Jersey, 1893. This unforgettable character actor built his entire thirty-year film career on playing prissy, fluttery clerks, bank tellers, assistant hotel managers and department store floorwalkers. Was he in fact the gay Stepin Fetchit? Who cares. He was funny, had perfect comic timing, and brightened many an otherwise dreary picture by his amusing presence. And if Pangborn's public thought that sissies and sister-marys were one and the same, so what? They sure as hell don't think so now. Rest in peace, dear Franklin Pangborn.

Franklin Pangborn, Aquarius

From The Gay Book of Days by Martin Grief (with Foreword by Samuel Steward). The Main Street Press. 1982.

Issue No. 194: The 1967 CBS Documentary "The Homosexuals"

Issue No. 179: ACT UP Action Tomorrow!

Join ACT UP's 25th Anniversary Direct Action

ACT UP and OCCUPY
TAX WALL STREET!
END AIDS!

April 25, 2012
At 11am
Massive demonstration and march.
Starts at City Hall (Broadway and Murray Street)
Ends at Wall Street.

ACT UP is calling for a small tax (0.05%) on Wall Street transactions and speculative trades in order to raise the money needed to end the global AIDS epidemic and provide universal healthcare in the US.

More info: 212-966-4873 | www.actupny.com | info@actupny.com

Facebook ACT UP NY Page | www.facebook.com/actupny

Twitter: @actupny | #taxwallst | #endaids

How can a Financial Speculation Tax help end AIDS?

- THE SCIENCE: The scientific community and AIDS activists agree: we now know how to break the back of the epidemic. New evidence shows early HIV treatment can reduce sexual transmission of the virus by 96%.

- THE REALITY: HIV treatment is needed to save lives, prevent illness, and reduce new infections, but there is a huge TREATMENT GAP and WAITING LISTS are growing in the U.S. and abroad.

-IN THE U.S.: 3,840 people who qualify for federal ADAP assistance to pay for HIV treatment are still on waiting lists. In addition, people with HIV and vulnerable communities in the U.S. need support and social services. Due to budget cuts, these essential services have been rolled back. Funding from the tax could also help pay for universal healthcare in the U.S.

- WORLDWIDE: Only 44% of people who need HIV treatment have access – more than 8 million do not. Revenue from the FST could bail out the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria, which cancelled its last round of grants to poor countries due to a lack of resources. Funding the Fund can help to make good on the global agreement – signed by the U.S. – to treat 15 million people by 2015, up from 6.6 million now. It will take around $22 billion a year between now and 2015 to finance the global HIV fight to save millions of lives and stop the HIV epidemic in its tracks.

- WHAT'S AT STAKE: AIDS has already claimed over 30 million lives. ACT UP is calling for an FST to help raise the money needed to close the gap in access to life-saving HIV treatment, and to END THE AIDS CRISIS.

The FST demonstration is linked to a global Robin Hood Tax campaign to fund
global health, global public goods, jobs, and to tackle climate change.

Issue No. 177: Saturday at THE HOMOCCULT SHOW, the Party & Easter Sunday

Sunny restored a Tiffany lamp.

Jonathan Sommer

Armando Lozano (center) & companions

Allan Vandever

Sofia Moreno (right)

Josh (left) & Chris Andrews

"Bestiary"

Daniel McKernan

Danny playing musick.

S.M.

going home (about 6 am)

Curator Talk on Easter - 1

Curator Talk on Easter - 2

Curator Talk on Easter - 3 (Amy Moreth)

Issue No. 140: Hammish Bowles

Issue No. 71: PREMIERE ISSUE RELEASED TODAY!