Pride may be over for another year but the Gladstone Hotel retains its focus on queer art through July 18 with That’s So Gay, a group show curated by Sholem Krishtalka, left. The curator hosts a panel talk tomorrow night (July 8, 7 pm) at the Gladdy with Philip Monk (director of the AGYU), Syrus Marcus Ware (AGO), and critic and curator, Gabrielle Moser.
“I’m a scarred veteran of panel talks where people drone on and on and on,” says Krishtalka, “so I want it to be fun and gossipy and anecdotal, with lots of images. With this show I was hell bent on making a queer art show that I would love and so I’ve been hell bent on creating a panel that I would love to attend and have fun at.”
Krishtalka was “very deliberate” in pulling the show together: “I didn’t want a cast of the usual suspects,” he stresses, although many of the artists are familiar, people like Stephen Andrews, Ed Pien, Sharon Switzer and Will Munro. “I needed to include those established mid-career artists but I also wanted a range of people who either haven’t shown a lot or are new to the city and are expanding and contributing to the queer art scene in Toronto.”
The curator is especially reverential about Will Munro (those are Polaroids of Munro’s bespoke underwear, above) to whom a special room is dedicated. Munro died in May at the age of 35 after a two-year battle with brain cancer.
“When I was approached about doing the show back in April,” recalls Krishtalka, “Will had just gone into palliative care and I envisioned a room where people could be with him if they couldn’t visit him. He meant a great deal to a great many people and I imagined this room as a place to be with him.”
“He really fits into a tradition of self-made culture, which is very strong in Toronto,” continues Krishtalka, “starting with people like General Idea in the 1960s and 70s. And then that was picked up by the queer core movement with people like Bruce LaBruce and G.B. Jones in the 1980s,and Will really took that and ran with it with his Vazaleen parties and his own art practice. He and his art and all the social organizing he did really sprang from a belief in the importance of community and the importance of finding a reflection of yourself somewhere, of belonging somewhere.”
Naturally enough, then, Krishtalka has chosen some of Munro’s silkscreen mirror work, two of which reflect each other into infinity, an iconic David Bowie portrait and an image of a leather daddy combined with ancient Egyptian symbolism. The room also includes Lori Newdick’s photographic portraits of Munro shot in 1997 when the artist was 22 years old. It’s a lovely tribute.
Regarding the title of the show, Krishtalka says, “I’ve seen my fair share of Pride shows and there’s always this reticence about them being tokenistic and parochial. So when I was approached with the idea of doing a Pride show I thought, ‘Oh God, Pride shows are so gay’ (laughs). And that seemed like a good place to start.”
“To hear the word gay being accepted as slang for everything and anything uncool sort of resonated with me and I thought maybe it was time to do a little 2010 reclamation and I decided to do my part to reclaim the word gay.”
“I approached artists with an aesthetic in mind rather than particular work. There were a few artists I wanted specific things from but for the most part I approached them based on their aesthetic.”
What is Krishtalka’s aesthetic? “It’s something elliptical and under the surface, kind of abstract, a more elusive approach to queer art-making rather than something really direct and didactic. Before they approached me, the joke was that they were going to call the show Cute Boys and Rainbows so I wanted to stay away from that kind of literalism and that kind of narrowness of identification that Pride shows tend to engender.”
WHERE/WHEN: That’s So Gay runs until July 18 at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street West, 416.531.4635); Free. Panel discussion July 8 at 7 pm, second floor.
Photos by Christopher Jones
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