Gay bondage art

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Is there a hint of frustration in his facial expression?

 


This powerful image by the same artist seems to play on that predicament, with the merman seeming to be torn between his old life on dry land, and life in the sea, which is now the only place in which he can survive. That deflected my thoughts to wondering about those upper body muscles.

“In S&M, queer bodies and queer communities use acts of submission and domination to experience new forms of agency and empowerment.

gay bondage art

The second chapter, which opens on July 24th, pairs Mapplethorpe with contemporary queer photographers , such as Catherine Opie (the only white artist in the list), Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Zanele Muholi and, again, Ligon, influenced by his ability to convey strength and virility in posing for camera, while challenging the photographer’s depiction of race.

Mapplethorpe is further commemorated in the group exhibition Art After Stonewall, 1969-1989 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, as part of New York’s city-wide celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising.

Back in January, the museum brought together the artist’s lesser known sculptural experiments with frame, in addition to his signature photographs of slaves and masters. In the image Mapplethorpe, who had turned himself into a tailed beast—or a devil, even—is placed before the eyes of a predominantly heterosexual audience, bringing S&M into the sterile borders of the white cube.

In our current and complicated political moment, how might hybridized techniques bring about a new sense of agency or empowerment?” Fernandes, along with a group of queer artists, assume the manifestation of power and compliance embedded in S&M to dissect our precarious social and political dynamics. The rehearsal at the refreshing Long Island seaside led to a performance at Central Synagogue, where the dancers dégagéd and twirled based on the artist’s signature kinky yet elegant moves.

“In S&M, queer bodies and queer communities use acts of submission and domination to experience new forms of agency and empowerment”

Meanwhile, the Kenyan-born artist is one of the standout stars of the 2019 Whitney Biennial with The Master and Form, another cage-like installation—a subtle riff on Modernist sculpture—activated by his team of dancers throughout the run of the show with his signature choreography of pain and pleasure.

He has a magnificent physique, a beautiful swirling body line and, it would seem, a taste for adorning himself with precious artifacts salvaged from the ruins. 

I normally ponder the secrets of merman reproduction in these images, but this one gives no clues in the below stairs department. His colourful frames in unconventional shapes and formats spoke to his subjects’ psychological complexities.

Among the film’s most gripping scenes was the man’s whipped back, on which leash marks before the bloodshed resembled an abstract painting. Perfect for luring unwary sailors onto the rocks, but how did he develop them without access to an underwater gym or even legs with which to brace himself for heavy lifts?

Actually, as is the way with AI, the origins of his lower body are betrayed by the bend in his tail at about knee height and the suggestion of a flexed foot between his tail fins.

That suggests he's actually a human who has been condemned by some sorcery to roam the seas, with his legs (and everything else, I suppose) trapped inside a fish's tail, like a sheath. As a special treat I am featuring all six together-the quality of the drawing varies but never the inspiration.

The Milking Machine 1

The Milking Machine 2

The Milking Machine 3

The Milking Machine 4

The Milking Machine 5 

The Milking Machine 6

 

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 Mythical mermen are a natural subject for AI art creators.

During the performance three performers, held together by custom-designed Chris Habana jewellery, remained still, enduring the pain of maintaining their bodies in positions dictated by the jewellery. On the horizon for Fernandes is a solo September exhibition, titled Contract and Release, at the Isamu Noguchi Museum in Queens, where he will continue his take on Modernist sculpture with objects designed with inspiration from ballet training devices, the rocking chair Noguchi designed for Martha Graham’s Appalachian Spring and, again, S&M.

In May, curatorial platform SUBLIMATION hosted an two-hour-long performance to kick off artist Vincent Tiley’s solo exhibition, Scorpions, for his leather, rope and horse bit paintings tied in knots based on the Japanese bondage art of shibari.

And sexuality, in its every unabashed form and expression, continues to be a tool for artists to raise their fists higher up in the air for visibility and pleasure.

 

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The Milking Machine series 2

This series, originally featured on the Sardax member site 2004-2014, is very loosely set within a prison system where the inmates are regularly drained in the most humiliating manner possible.

The artist’s online porn-culled images show couples engaging with physical acts dictated by Serra’s commands. Through his work in film, photography and sculpture, Motta excavates the overlooked stories of intersex individuals or same-sex couples executed under stigmas of western colonialism. Segall’s plan for the future is to turn Serra’s dictations, which she believes perfectly resonate with power dynamics in sexual bondage, into a performance series, and eventually a video.

No doubt the rising temperatures of the summer are most experienced on the scorching platforms of New York subway, and in the exhibitions celebrating queer rebellion and commemorating the invaluable legacy of the Stonewall Uprising.

The crowd observed the live endurance, in which one of the two performers conjoined by a ball gag started drooling half an hour into the performance, to the backdrop of paintings echoing the show’s exploration of the thin line between pain and pleasure.

Racial power dynamics and S&M have also spearheaded New York artist Carlos Motta’s recent P.P.O.W.