Archives

Salvador

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2012

Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, verso

Archival pigment print

13.5 x 13.5 inches
(Edition of 5)
Contact gallery for price.

Please note that prices increase as editions sell.

Red Dancer

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2012

Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, verso

Archival pigment print

13.5 x 13.5 inches
(Edition of 5)
Contact gallery for price.

Please note that prices increase as editions sell.

Son of Judy

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Silverlake, CA,
2012

Signed, titled, dated, and numbered, verso

Archival pigment print

13.5 x 13.5 inches
(Edition of 5)
Contact gallery for price.

Please note that prices increase as editions sell.

The VIP Room

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2012

Only available as part of the limited-edition box set of the book Barmaid (Edition of 5)

Walnut and steel box

Signed copy of book, plus four 7 x 7-inch archival pigment prints:
“Barmaid”
“The Pool Table (Self Portrait)”
“The VIP Room”
“Embrace”

Contact gallery for price.

The Pool Table (Self Portrait)

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2012

Only available as part of the limited-edition box set of the book Barmaid (Edition of 5)

Walnut and steel box

Signed copy of book, plus four 7 x 7-inch archival pigment prints:
“Barmaid”
“The Pool Table (Self Portrait)”
“The VIP Room”
“Embrace”

Contact gallery for price.

Barmaid

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For nearly two years, artist John Arsenault worked as a bar-back at the Eagle L.A.—a gay leather bar in the Silverlake neighborhood of Los Angeles.  Over the course of that time, he shot thousands of photographs largely with his iPhone.  A visual diary of sorts, the collection of images is titled “Barmaid.”

Larry Collins writes:

Édouard Manet’s 1882 Impressionist masterpiece “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,” in the Courtold Gallery in London, is the touchstone for John Arsenault’s “Barmaid.” It is a painting featuring an expressionless young woman in heavy makeup, seen behind a white marble bar with sparkling glass and foil, bottles of red and green liqueurs and champagne, a bowl of tangerines and a vase of roses.

The key photograph in Arsenault’s “Barmaid” is found somewhere in the middle of his group of 50 images. It re-creates Manet’s painting closely, casting Arsenault himself as the barmaid, but now at the Eagle L.A., 133 years later. Arsenault stands impassively, just as Manet’s model does, with a bowl of limes instead of tangerines, an intense orange backlight as compensation. Behind Arsenault hangs a large painted mural of leathermen engaged in an erotic dance. The Folies-Bergère was like the Eagle in many respects: a place of entertainments and erotic negotiations. In Arsenault’s collection we also find a photograph of the pink rose, a nod to the pink rose in Manet’s painting. Arsenault has bared his furry chest to us, whereas the young woman has a floral posy at her décolletage. Manet’s painting represents a nightclub, a circus even, with a trapeze artist above the crowd, all reflected in the mirror behind the bar. A hallmark and a strength of Manet’s greatest paintings is that much is left unexplained, not meant to be decoded.

Linda Simpson | “The Accidental Historian of Drag Queens,” The New York Times

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From Michael Musto’s article from The New York Times:

Long before “RuPaul’s Drag Race” made cross-dressing a televised form of mainstream entertainment, there was the drag boom of the 1980s and ’90s, when a burgeoning New York club scene was filled with drag performers who perfected the art form.

Much of that scene would be forgotten were it not for the drag comic who goes by the stage name Linda Simpson, who captured it all with a point-and-shoot camera she kept in her purse, making her the Studs Terkel of the nip-and-tucking crowd.

View the original article

Browse the exhibition “Pages” at ClampArt
Browse all of Linda Simpson’s work at ClampArt

Brian Finke | “Photographs Most Muscular,” The New York Times

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From Andrew Boryga’s article for The New York Times:

In Brian Finke’s photographs of the bodybuilding world, almost everyone and everything is ripped—even the trophies. Many of the men and women boast layers upon layers of muscles stacked like bricks, their thighs rippling with cuts and their bodies glowing from orange dye. Muscles are abundant, clothing is not: glittery bathing suits, thong-like “performance suits” and the occasional pair of heels.

Mr. Finke was sent to Las Vegas in 2003 by “Men’s Journal” to document the annual Mr. Olympia competition, a pageant of modern anatomic marvels. He completed the assignment but was still fascinated. “You can’t really capture how a body looks visually any better than you can in these competitions,” he said. “It’s such an extreme level.”

View the original article

Browse the series “Bodybuilding” at ClampArt
Browse the exhibition “Most Muscular” at ClampArt
Browse all of Brian Finke’s work at ClampArt