drawings the boy with the thorn in his side rapture when you're a boy... circumference

When you're a boy, you can wear a uniform
When you're a boy, other boys check you out.

David Bowie - Boys Keep Swinging

I make work that explores relationships between and among men.  The exchange of looks, the privilege of
looking and the wish to be seen are positions I explore to reveal the ways men respond, desire, and relate
to each other.

The drawings for when you're a boy... are part of my observational practice - basically I see someone and
draw him.  But in addition to being a record of seeing, they function as notes to myself about a particular per-
son or encounter.  They document something about the men I have seen - their strength, beauty, cruelty,
cowardice, energy, power, clothing - that I find compelling enough to draw and take back to my studio.

The drawings are installed floor to ceiling at the limits of peripheral vision.  Seen this way, they become a
catalogue of the pleasures, desires, and fears of a gay black man.

Like a chapel for the unrestricted and shameless gaze I was not allowed when I was a boy.

when you're a boy... 2005

Drawings in graphite, oil, watercolour, ink, gouache, on paper and mylar, with polaroids and ink-
jet prints. Attached to wall with steel t-pins.
Installed at the Artists Foundation, Main Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts
Kathleen Bitetti, Executive Director/Curator

Detail of left corner

 

Detail of right corner

 

Details and single images from installation.  Click to enlarge.

Back to drawings