the bruce eves museum

2009-07-19T09:36:00.000-07:00

ARTIST’S STATEMENT Working against the backdrop of a global art practice that is all too often a self-contained tautology, my body of work has often been described (and dismissed) as merely "political". But it is not political in the traditional sense. From the earliest point in my career I have delved into the question of the "gay sensibility". As an amalgam of Aubrey Beardsley and Johnny Rotten, I have been influenced by the theoretical issues raised by performance and conceptual art, but rather than take the standard trip down memory lane into the suck-and-fuck paradigm, I've positioning myself as an ironic spectator. Cherry-picking at will from mutually exclusive sources - the morning headlines, the official record of 20th century art, the signs and signifiers of the gay male underground – has allowed me to explore the spaces between these charged relationships. While it is old news that the male body continues to be a provocation, ironically, a critique of masculinity has gone largely unexplored. ¶ Herein lies the challenge: The proposition explored in much of my work is that it should be possible to be simultaneously hot and sweaty and critical and detached. It is desirable -- even exhilarating -- to question the givens of our cultural baggage while at the same time allowing ourselves to be wrapped in its brawny arms. If there is any theme that unites my disparate body of work it is that it concentrates on the representative gestures of maleness, their signifiers, and their remains. ¶ Even though it is virtually indefinable, this much I know for certain: necks are meant for sticking out, envelopes are meant for pushing, and art is not suitable for family viewing, nor must it be emotionally uplifting. Art must refuse to kowtow to the limitless demands for the familiar and the safe and the conventional. Art has nothing to do with social work or political stability or with the ending of negative stereotypes: these are the jobs for propagandists. It's a tough world out there; do we really need any more decorators? ¶ After fully moving over to the digital side in 2000, I have established a presence internationally through my participation in New Media events and festivals in Argentina, Brazil, Britain, Canada, Cuba, Germany, India, the Netherlands, Spain, Thailand, and Venezuela. In 2001 I returned to Canada after living abroad for many years, and after a great deal of time and effort the last of the prison tattoos have finally been removed. ¶ What follows in a more or less chronological order are the artworks, texts, and interviews that have kept me preoccupied and off the streets for the past couple of decades. If you make it to the end, you'll find a complete list of my peripatetic wanderings. BRUCE EVES

"Jim 428" 1989

2009-07-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

"Homosexual Pick-Up; Hellgate Ferry New York, 1860" 1989

2009-07-17T13:32:00.000-07:00

"Just Do It" 1989

2009-07-16T13:34:00.000-07:00

"Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow, Blue?" 1991

2009-07-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

"Burn The Quilt" 1991

2009-07-14T13:36:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Jack)" 1991

2009-07-13T13:37:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Shackled)" 1991

2009-07-12T13:40:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Red Cross)" 1993

2009-07-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (E041094)" 1994

2009-07-10T16:05:00.000-07:00

2009-07-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

THE HISTORY OF LIGHT In the early 1990s I embarked on a project investigating the possibilities of pinhole photography. Generally used as a game to amuse small children, it is a way of making photographic images without the use of a camera. The paradox of using low-end means to achieve high concept results both satisfied my craving for a Luddite means of production and a way to reference issues current in contemporary art. At its simplest, a small hole is made in the wall of a dark room allowing the tiny beam of light entering the room to project an image of the outside world on the opposite wall. Historically, it was a tool used by painters like Johannes Vermeer to side step the complexities of perspective. Any light tight container will do: a shoebox for example. The “lens” is merely a piece of tinfoil with a pinprick set into one side of the box. A sheet of photographic paper is mounted opposite the lens. Once the exposure has been made, the paper is processed in the usual fashion in a darkroom, and the resulting negative image can then be contact printed to produce a positive image. What is unusual about the process is that the pinhole captures an image with an indefinite depth of field so that all objects near and far, are perfectly in focus. The lengths of exposures are learned through trial and error, and depending of the light and weather conditions an exposure could be as long as thirty minutes. This would render any moving object invisible. The results are often gloom and forlorn. ¶ The nine photographs reproduced here are drawn from a 20 image series. Drawn together under the elusive title of “The History of Light” this suite was created largely in Brooklyn, New York and Charleston, South Carolina. ¶ With it’s capacity for an indefinite depth of field, pinhole photographs of small mundane objects assume the monumentality of public sculpture. An ordinary one dollar bill becomes as obnoxious and intrusive as a billboard dominating a junkyard and an accidental light leak renders a Ken doll into a seductively insinuating figure hovering over a bubbling cauldron worthy of the brothers Grimm. Scribbling on and adding collage elements to the negative ups the ante for a picture’s conceptual implications, and the medium is ideally suited to transform the mere gothic into something more satisfyingly overwrought and post- apocalyptic. BRUCE EVES

"The Cauldron" 1993

2009-07-08T15:12:00.000-07:00

"One Dollar Bill" 1993

2009-07-07T15:14:00.000-07:00

"Virgin Vampire" 1994

2009-07-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

"X Man #1" 1994

2009-07-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

"County Jail, Charleston" 1994

2009-07-04T15:17:00.000-07:00

"Popular Mechanics" 1994

2009-07-03T15:18:00.000-07:00

"Black Stabbed Marilyn" 1995

2009-07-02T15:19:00.000-07:00

"Double Overdeveloped" 1995

2009-07-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

"Stray Dog" 1995

2009-06-30T15:29:00.000-07:00

"Hunkosaurus Rex" 1995

2009-06-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

"Lab Rats" 1996

2009-06-29T21:35:00.000-07:00

"Counting From One to Ten" 1996

2009-06-29T21:27:00.001-07:00

"Self-Portrait with Bayonets" 1996

2009-06-29T21:27:00.000-07:00

"Four Triangles" 1997

2009-06-29T21:26:00.000-07:00

"Four Queens" 1997

2009-06-29T21:25:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Skull/G.I. Joe)" 1998

2009-06-29T15:35:00.000-07:00

"The Museum of Fear" (an installation proposal) 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.006-07:00

"Untitled Installation Proposal" 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.005-07:00

"Happy Holidays" 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.004-07:00

"Two Demonstrations" 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.003-07:00

"It's Alive!" 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.002-07:00

"Block Buster" 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.001-07:00

"Red Green Stop Go" 1998

2009-06-29T15:34:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Bosie)" 1998

2009-06-29T15:33:00.004-07:00

"1969 Updated (After Sol Lewitt) 1998

2009-06-29T15:33:00.003-07:00

"The Group of Seven" 1998

2009-06-29T15:33:00.002-07:00

"Auto-Interrogation" 1999

2009-06-29T15:32:00.004-07:00

"78.5 Degree Angle (A Red Herring)" 1999

2009-06-29T15:32:00.003-07:00

"Vase" 1999

2009-06-29T15:32:00.002-07:00

"Sight Gag" 1999

2009-06-29T15:32:00.001-07:00

"Exhibit A (Toss Several Small Bombs); Exhibit B (Analyze Raw Data)" 1999

2009-06-29T15:28:00.001-07:00

"Geometry with Balls" 1999

2009-06-29T15:27:00.000-07:00

"Geschlechtsubergange" 1999

2009-06-29T15:26:00.000-07:00

"G.I. Jesus" 1999

2009-06-29T15:25:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Body Fragment #1" 1999

2009-06-29T15:23:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Body Fragment #2 (Stockade)" 1999

2009-06-29T15:22:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Self-Portrait #45" 2000

2009-06-29T03:27:00.000-07:00

"Some Things Borrowed Something's Blue" 2000

2009-06-28T09:10:00.000-07:00

"A Gradual Accumulation (With Arcs and Triangles)" 2000

2009-06-28T09:08:00.000-07:00

"Olympia (Updated)" 2000

2009-06-28T09:05:00.000-07:00

"Four Heads" 2000

2009-06-28T09:00:00.000-07:00

"Meat/Cop" 2000

2009-06-28T08:59:00.002-07:00

"Black and Blue" 2000

2009-06-28T08:59:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Spy Plane)" 2000

2009-06-28T08:58:00.001-07:00

2009-06-28T08:57:00.000-07:00

FRENZY Following the lead begun by On Kawara’s obsessive and precise notations of his place in the world, Frenzy! attempts to manage world events by arranging in numerical order the results of various rebel incursions, government crack-downs, air and traffic crashes, isolated bombings, and mass arrests. Drawn from the headlines of the daily newspaper over the course of one year and printed in dramatic red on black, these often alliterative one-liners resemble a harshly beautiful type of poetry. These haiku of horror begin with “War Crimes Suspect Blows Himself Up” and continues almost unabated until “Explosives Laden Vehicle Blast Kills One Hundred”. Designed as a wall installation limited to a maximum of one hundred panels and arranged in a grid, something curious and quietly uplifting begins to happen amidst the onslaught of carnage: gaps begin to insinuate themselves among the corpses. As the number of multiple deaths increase, these incidents of calm gradually outnumber and overtake the headlines. As the body count rises it becomes apparent that, in a grimly positive way, events resulting in an ever-increasing loss of life become a rarer and more isolated phenomenon. ¶ A second version adapts the headlines as a rapid-fire slide show/video projection. As the progression of killing starts to slow down, the exhibition space becomes enveloped in blackness with increasing regularity, only to be interrupted occasionally by the next ghastly incident. To insure continuity, the projections are accompanied by calmly soothing (or irritatingly inappropriate) elevator music – depending on your worldview. ¶ But this piece solves a puzzle of a more formalist nature. There has always been a question in my mind of how one makes art that is monumental in scale and scope yet maintains the economic benefits of inexpensive shipping and storage. That this problem is not new can be explained by example. Though their conceptual points of view and aesthetic approaches are varied, Carl Andre, Gilbert and George, and Annette Messanger all come readily to mind as artists who have found solutions to this dilemma in their own ways. BRUCE EVES

"Frenzy!" 2000

2009-06-28T08:56:00.000-07:00

"Ravenous" 2000

2009-06-28T08:50:00.000-07:00

"Rectangle" 2001

2009-06-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

"Triangle" 2001

2009-06-27T13:52:00.000-07:00

"Hangnail" 2001

2009-06-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

"Knot" 2001

2009-06-27T08:06:00.000-07:00

"Blowjob" 2001

2009-06-27T08:05:00.001-07:00

"Inventory Number 091201" 2001

2009-06-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

"1001 Arabian Nights (Updated)" 2001

2009-06-27T08:04:00.000-07:00

"Untitled (Burqa)" 2001

2009-06-27T08:03:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Self-Portrait #46" 2001

2009-06-27T08:02:00.000-07:00

"In Advance of a Broken Nose" 2001

2009-06-27T08:01:00.001-07:00

"Cowboys and Indians" 2001

2009-06-27T08:01:00.000-07:00

Interview with Stylusart, Barcelona

2009-06-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

Where do you prefer to work exterior or studio? Explain your preferences. Today is May 12, 2002 in Toronto Canada and it is 7 degrees Celsius and raining (but it feels like it’s about to start snowing). So the answer to your question is rather self-evident, I work indoors (while worrying about the fact that perhaps I’ve planted my vegetable garden too soon). For the longest time I’ve never had a studio per se, largely due to economics; but since moving into a large old house with my partner last summer, I’ve been able to devote one room for use as a studio. While I work almost exclusively with digital media now and a computer takes up so little space, it is a treat to have a dedicated space to spread out and make a mess (which is a far cry from my former work area – the kitchen table). Do you make any image treatment in a laboratory? What do you think about computer image treatment? I used to use a photo-lab for processing and printing but at Christmas I was given the gift of an ink-jet printer, so now I do all the printing myself. Because there is not longer any need for chemicals, the printing process no longer necessitates a darkroom with all the accompanying mess and smells (and is probably less dangerous to my lungs – even though I still smoke like a chimney!). The maximum size of prints that I can output is only 20 cm across, but I like to work in large formats (which is prohibitively expensive when using a lab) so this opens many conceptual problems and possibilities. I’ve found two solutions to this dilemma. The first is to construct a piece out of many fragments and arrange them in a grid, which gives the work a subtle (but rigid) organizing template that is often at odds with the chaos apparent in the entire image. The other solution is to frame the fragments individually and arrange to frames into a grid, creating the impression of window mullions or the bars of a cage, increasing the inherent voyeurism of looking at art. ¶ Probably 99% of computer imaging is garbage. Much of the work I’ve seen involves using digital media to simulate painting, which seems to me to be deeply conservative and pointless. There is a faux-trendiness involved with using new media that may be a way of disguising an artist’s conceptual bankruptcy. If you’re going to try to simulate a painting, why not just make a painting? There’s a political dimension to digital media that seems largely unexplored – if computer-manipulated images are capable of simulating reality (as opposed to the traditional snapshot, which captures the world as it is) is there not a danger for governments or news agencies to advance their own agenda? How reliable are the images that we see on the evening news or in the newspapers? This poses an interesting conceptual question for visual artists. Which do you prefer black and white or colour? What do you think of this dichotomy? I work almost exclusively in colour, although I did a series of very creepy and gothic black and white pinhole photographs a few years ago. Because colour is “prettier” and more naturalistic it’s possible to use the inherent prettiness against itself and use it ironically. It makes me wonder if the history of photography, and by extension, the history of art would have taken a different course had colour processes been invented before the use of black and white processes. How would you value the present moment of photography in your country both commercial and creative? The evolution of my own work, I can see now in retrospect, has been in line with the evolution of contemporary Canadian art over the last thirty years. While the history of photography is a parallel history, my involvement has been to move from the dematerialization of conceptual art through performance art toward using photo-based work as a conceptual tool to investigate and critique charged relationships between voyeurism, public display, male vanity, sexuality, and doctrinaire political extremism. Much of the relevant photo-based work in Canada follows the same time-line, and while not as butch and antagonistic as my investigations, there is a clear tendency to follow the influences of contemporary art rather than the influences of the history of photography. Thus, there is less a problem for artists using photo-based means being viewed as equal to painters, which happens so often in other places. We would like you to name three photographers whom you find interesting (from any period). Gilbert and George from London, and George Platt Lynes (who worked in the United States from the 1930s-50s) interest me very much both for the collaborative nature of the former and the bravery of the second. While the political environments they operated in were very different, both were able to make unabashedly homoerotic work. Lynes faced the potential for serious legal censure from the intolerance of the time and the G & G duo have been able to forge a very successful career in an art world that is still shamefully and hypocritically homophobic. While George Platt Lynes was a traditional photographer as comfortable working for fashion magazines as making art photos, the Londoners’ exuberant and large-scale photo pieces pointed the way toward extending the gravitas of painting to photo-based work. The third favourite is not an individual but the use of the medium of web design by artists entering into the democratic free-for-all of the Internet. The form offers the potential to increase the viewership of contemporary art practice exponentially while at the same time subverting the sell-or-die ethos of the commercial marketplace. The conceptualists of the 60s and 70s attempted this through other means, but the market quickly subsumed their projects. It is rather amusing to watch museums scrambling to accommodate web-based work in a fruitless attempt to place parameters around something that is by its very nature open-ended. What do you think of Stylusart? It is refreshing indeed to find an art publication which is not bound by the whims of advertisers, as well as one which truly takes an international approach to the art world (a world which no longer has any need for a hegemonic centre). By publishing on-line, there is a real opportunity to spark the kinds of intelligent dialogue that is so often missing from the letters to the editor pages of art journals. What do you think about the campaign “Original Solidarity” organized by Stylusart? When Carmen Podesas talked about positive globalization in the Original Solidarity campaign to raise funds for the Save the Children Fund, it shows that art can indeed make a difference in the world. While it is impossible for artists to become social workers without descending into propaganda, the campaign shows that we can use our voices and individual unique perspectives, if only in a small way, to effect social change that will benefit everyone. I’m very pleased to have been invited to participate.

"Fifteen Sheets to the Wind" 2002

2009-06-26T20:25:00.000-07:00

"Three Grids (The Barracks)" 2002

2009-06-26T20:24:00.000-07:00

"Double Doppelganger #2" 2002

2009-06-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Double Self-Portrait #4" 2002

2009-06-26T20:22:00.000-07:00

"Wrestlemania (After Edward Muybridge)" 2002

2009-06-26T20:20:00.000-07:00

"All-Male Orgy" 2002

2009-06-26T20:19:00.000-07:00

"Red, Blue, and Green Forever!" 2002

2009-06-26T20:18:00.000-07:00

"The Signifiers"

2009-06-26T13:45:00.000-07:00

COMFORTING AS IT IS to think of gay history as a series of ever expanding victories away from a culture that was once so unforgiving and hateful, we continue to confuse tolerance with equality. We are in danger of falling into the smug delusion that every advance is a permanent one, yet our history is something more fluid. As the co-curator and chief archivist with the International Gay History Archive throughout the 80s – then the largest collection in private hands of archival materials and ephemera in North America – I was impacted directly in my understanding of the broader context of our political, social, and cultural lives. This provided me with a wealth of raw information that fed directly into my art practice. This collection, with materials dating from the late-Victorian era, is now part of the Rare Books and Manuscripts collection of the New York Public Library. Using this collection as the basis for their 1994 exhibition, “Becoming Visible”, the NYPL demonstrated how our present relative safety and well being has been matched or exceeded in other places and at other times. The sophistication of London in the 1890s, or Berlin, Paris, and Harlem in the 1920s seemed permanent only to be destroyed by events beyond our control. The distancing of time and geography has made it easy to overlook that current political discourse often echoes a chilling past. ¶ In an on-going series of digitally altered photographs, THE SIGNIFIERS (2002 - ) appropriates a group of snapshots from the time before rainbow flags, when the coded language of 1950s physique photography slipped below the censorious radar of North American conservatives and offered clues to a forbidden life. When viewed from our urban aerie of self-satisfaction and relative freedoms, it is easy to forget how dangerous it once was to be flamingly queer. Yet at their best, these sweetly erotic mail-order delicacies were mini-masterpieces of film-noir shadows and pan-historical reference. While they were not quite art and not quite pornography, they distinguished themselves from their equally testosterone-fuelled (but decidedly more Neanderthal) low-rent hetero counterparts with a euphemistic vocabulary of props and studio backdrops. This was what signified these photographs as being “gay” – the background was communicating a coded language that only the initiated could crack. ¶ While the original snaps sentimentally pine for a love affair with a past that never existed, in my updated versions the glistening demi-gods have been digitally removed placing the remaining shadowy backdrops of these once nostalgic bits of homoerotic fluff squarely in the present. While this project explores the notions of loss and memory, disappearance and cultural invisibility – whether from disease or repression or neglect, specific interpretations are left open-ended. In their own insinuatingly melancholy way, they are quietly horrifying. BRUCE EVES

"Untitled Signifier #1: Updated (Swimboy)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:44:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier #2: Updated (Youth 02)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:42:00.001-07:00

"Untitled Signifier #3: Updated (Jim Kavanaugh)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:42:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier #4: Updated (Ed Fury)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:41:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier #5: Updated (Jim Braga)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:39:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier #6: Updated (bola)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:38:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 7: Updated (Bud Counts)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:37:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 8: Updated (Bud Counts)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 10: Updated (Kim Fox)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:35:00.001-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 9: Updated (Dick Spero)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:35:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 11: Updated (George Towers)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:34:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 12: Updated (Keith Stephan)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Signifier # 14: Updated (Rope)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

"Unititled Signifier # 16: Updated (bcounts0013)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:31:00.000-07:00

"The Signifiers" 2002

2009-06-26T13:30:00.000-07:00

"Storyboard # 5 (Bud Counts Is Missing)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:29:00.000-07:00

"Unititled Signifier # 21: Updated (Breadley)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:28:00.000-07:00

"Slow (Arc) Down -- with Prop" 2002

2009-06-26T13:25:00.000-07:00

"The Poles" 2002

2009-06-26T13:24:00.000-07:00

"Smarty Pants" 2002

2009-06-26T13:22:00.000-07:00

"The Studio (Updated)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

"Untitled Self-Portrait #47 (Tasteless)" 2002

2009-06-26T13:20:00.000-07:00