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Bruce Eves: Challenging Art "COMFORTING as it is to think of gay history as a series of ever expanding victories against intolerance, we are in danger of falling into a smug delusion. We confuse tolerance with equality, and despite the occasional setback, have come to believe that every advance is permanent. Our history is something more fluid, and our present relative safety and well being has been matched or exceeded in other places and at other times. The sophistication of London in the 1890s, or Berlin and Paris and Harlem in the 1920s seemed permanent only to be destroyed by events beyond our control. As co-founder of the International Gay History Archive, I am intimately aware of the means with which we have been marginalized throughout time. And as an artist, I have been able to adapt the curatorial experience at the gay archive as the raw material for my art." For more
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"Much of my work explores the ironic [and iconic] relationship between gay male sexuality and its representative codes, and the social control manifested within the larger social construct of masculinity. I attempt to challenge both the definition of culturally deviant behavior as imposed by mainstream society and the constraints we impose upon ourselves within an increasingly regimented subculture. Drawing from wide ranging sources for these conceptually grounded photo-based works, I am attempting to expand the possibilities for making challenging art. Often employing disruptive juxtapositions, my work explores currently charged relationships - between sexuality and political extremism, voyeurism and public display - through an investigation and critique of a zeitgeist both enraptured with conspicuous consumption and demanding hardened formulations."
Bruce Eves is a Canadian artist who lived and worked in New York City for many years, and recently returned to Canada. He has exhibited throughout Europe and North America. Career highlights include working with Joseph Beuys at Documenta VI in Kassel, and Arturo Schwartz at the Museo di Arte Moderna in Bologna; and a site-specific installation at Artist's Space in New York as part of their AIDS Forum series. He is co-founder of the International Gay History Archive, now in the Rare Books and Manuscript Division of NY Public Library.
click here for the artist's detailed descriptions of these works...
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