Rio de Janeiro, Similarities between BDSM and Christianity in Robert Mapplethorpe’s Photographs.. and More
Brazil_Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro’s Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel gallery presents “Robert Mapplethorpe: More Than a Face” through July 22.
Robert Mapplethorpe (1946-1989) was an American photographer known for his black-and-white portraits, nudes, and self-portraits. The show presents works created in the late 1970s and 1980s.
The exhibition focuses on images of sex, violence, masculinity, and sexual and religious submission. Masks and mirrors, sculpted muscles, fishnet stockings, knives and leather, and crucifixes recur in Mapplesthorpe’s photographs. The exhibition explains that in Mapplesthorpe’s work, Christianity and BDSM are represented as sharing similar image structures, such as devotion and submission, distribution of positions, archetypal characters, and fetishes.
USA_New York
Tracey Rose in Queens Museum: Carnivalesque Statements on Post-colonial History
The Queens Museum in New York City presents “Shooting Down Babylon,” a solo exhibition by Tracey Rose (b. 1974). The show is on view through September 10.
Rose was born in South Africa and grew up during Apartheid. She has developed a reputation for her subversive and playful performances since the 1990s. Although Rose doesn’t work in a specific media, interest in the body and its performativity is always present. She sees the body, especially her own body featured in her work, as a site of protest, anger, resistance, and discourse. Her work has addressed themes of race, repatriation, reparations, judgment, and relationships left behind after Apartheid and colonization. More recently, Rose has been focusing on processes of healing and ritualization.
The exhibition presents the artist’s entire body of work from the 1990s up to date. The show was first presented at the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (Zeitz MOCAA) in Cape Town, South Africa before opening in the United States.
USA_New York
Bob Thompson’s Paintings in 52 Walker: Jazz Inspired Color, Line, and Figuration
New York’s 52 Walker gallery presents “Bob Thompson: So let us all be citizens” through July 9. The title is a quote from African-American painter Bob Thompson’s (1937-1966) speech, which he gave in church as a teenager. It reflects Thompson’s passion for the tenets of freedom and expression. The Whitney Museum of American Art organized a retrospective of Bob Thompson in 1998, and this exhibition marks the first time Thompson presented in New York in 25 years.
Although Thompson’s career spans only eight years, from 1958 to his untimely death in 1966, he left behind a unique body of work that has had a lasting impact on younger painters. At a time when abstraction was the dominant style in American art, Thompson developed a distinctive style of color, line, and figuration to create his paintings. He was engrossed with the exploratory and improvisational approach of jazz music and sought to resonate with it in his paintings.
His paintings combine depictions of the human bodies, allegories, and natural landscapes, while also revealing the influence of European classical masters.
