Art Beat reviews Pride Month exhibit 'Kaleidoscope 2: Art Through Your Eyes' at Gallery X
“Kaleidoscope 2: Art Through Your Eyes,” the current exhibition on display at Gallery X, filling both floors, is presented in conjunction with the South Coast LGBTQ+ Network.
June is Pride Month and the show is promoted as a showcase of the work of local LGBTQ+ artists and allies but alas, only a fragment of the displayed art deals with issues or themes associated with the movement. And that may be a missed opportunity, given the harrowing political atmosphere and social distress that the nation finds itself in.
The news of the recently leaked draft opinion showing that the Supreme Court may be poised to overturn Roe v. Wade this summer is ripe with the possibility of the further diminishment of established civil rights. Might the right-leaning Court also consider a rollback of the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which legalized same sex marriage in every state in the union? It certainly may.
Beyond that, the LGBTQ+ community and allies grapple with other serious concerns: employment and discrimination, sexual violence, bullying and harassment, public bathroom accommodations that are not an affront to personal dignity, healthcare issues, and the resistance to the seemingly simple acceptance of preferred gender pronouns (PGP).
The time to speak up is now, whether that message is delivered on a canvas or on a pedestal, in a photograph or a song, on the wide expanse of a billboard or within the tight confines of an art review.
Among those that spoke up within the context of the exhibition is the always stalwart and precise Stephen Remick, who presents a small painting of a rainbow, perhaps a double-rainbow, against a night sky, much lighter than the near-black shadowy landscape below it. In Remick’s hands, the rainbow is not bumper sticker cliche but a sublime arc of hope.
Rose Wright’s textile work, “Andre’s Secret #1,” features two dark androgynous figures in silhouette, near enough to touch each other but with their hands in their pockets. The work is fragmented by the inclusion of a mysterious striped third figure and yellow stitching across the surface. It is unclear what Andre’s first secret might be but there is the implication that there may be a second secret and a third. Perhaps more.
Longtime political activist and cartoonist Joe Quigley displays a postcard-sized illustration of a young boy pushing open the door of a women's room. One the other side, await five men and a woman, armed with clubs and other makeshift weapons in order to “protect the children,” no doubt. But why can THOSE men be in the women's room?
“Pride Mosaic,” a digital artwork by Hannah Clark is an arrangement of polygons in a wide variety of hues that is easy on the eyes but strives almost too hard to be all-inclusive. When I read the title of a mixed media work by Susan Brandon, I’d hoped that “Field Guide to Fairies” was going to be some clever and subversive political art commentary, but it was actually about the tiny winged beings of mythology.
By far, the artist who made the most blatant and necessary art dealing with LGBTQ+ issues was David Jodoin. His four photographs include “Silent No More,” featuring a handsome and shirtless man holding an empty picture frame over some kinky version of a garter belt that he wears, complete with a little gold bow on them.
Jodoin also presents an untitled image of a young guy with unnaturally blond hair under his backwards-facing red baseball cap. One hand is held up, almost in a defensive stance. On one cheek are scrawled the characters “NO H8”. No hate.
That sums it all up pretty well.
“Kaleidoscope 2: Art Through Your Eyes” is on display at Gallery X, 169 William St., New Bedford, through June 19.
This article originally appeared on The Herald News: Pride Month exhibit on display at Gallery X in Newport
