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Public Record: Portraits of Affection and Intimacy (A virtual exhibition)

Aug 11, 2022 – Oct 11, 2022

LGBTQIA+ life and experience are constantly contested, negated and marginalized within public discourse. As Gilbert Baker, who created the pride flag as a symbol of hope in 1978, once said, “When all else fails, art is the ultimate weapon.” With this in mind, this virtual exhibition will explore intimate, private portraits of closeness, affection and camaraderie as sites of strength and vulnerability, making space for a more complex, nuanced human experience and interaction.

Top Prize Winners

1st Place: Xiangyun Chen
2nd Place: Michael McFadden
3rd Place: Jesse Freidin

Juror

Richard Renaldi

Virtual Opening Night Reception

Thursday, August 11, 5 pm PST, 2022. RSVP HERE.


The Juror

Richard Renaldi (http://renaldi.com/) was born in Chicago in 1968. He received a BFA in photography from New York University in 1990. He is represented by Benrubi Gallery in New York and Robert Morat Galerie in Berlin. Five monographs of his work have been published, including Richard Renaldi: Figure and Ground (Aperture, 2006); Fall River Boys (Charles Lane Press, 2009); Touching Strangers (Aperture, 2014); Manhattan Sunday (Aperture, 2016); I Want Your Love (Super Labo, 2018). He was the recipient of a 2015 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.


Juror Statement

Queer People who continue the process of fighting to expand who is welcome at the table and who gets to be seen, have had both the challenge and good fortune to create their own structure for how to define and construct identity and relationships. Public Record: Portraits of Affection and Intimacy affirms this by presenting work by a talented group of artists and image makers who are documenting with honesty and bravery the parts of themselves that are often hidden or taboo. Looking through the collection of photographs I felt validation and kinship with the many roles, kinks, and moments of intimacy depicted in these works. I have been thinking a lot about feelings and how people so often don’t allow themselves to be moved and instead go through life with an armor designed to protect themselves from the possibility of pain and heartbreak. These images and the artists who made them don’t do that. They let their guard down, let us in, and share. That’s the real prize to come out of this competition.


Exhibiting Artists

Chris Behroozian, Xiangyu Chen, David Clifton-Strawn, Michael Eldridge, Jesse Freidin, Paul Gravett, Maxwell Harvey-Sampson, Alexis Hunley, Michael Joseph, Michael McFadden, Sonya Naumann, B. Proud, Cai Quirk, Osceola Refetoff, Sarah Stellino, JP Terlizzi, Mitchell Walker, Jerry Weber, Sandra Chen Weinstein, Michael Young and Lloyd Ziff