RISD Museum Exhibition Explores Intimacy - Inside Art with Michael Rose

RISD Museum Exhibition Explores Intimacy - Inside Art with Michael Rose

 

The importance of representation in visual art is difficult to overstate. To see oneself and one’s own experience on the walls of museums has, for much of history, been the privilege of a few. Any distance between us, an exhibition currently on view at the RISD Museum in Providence, seeks to highlight the intimate experiences of a wider array of voices. The opening text for the show reads, in part that, “Any distance between us explores the power and significance of intimate relationships in works of contemporary art, particularly those made by artists who identify as Queer and artists of color.” In a selection of rich and diverse artworks, this exhibition achieves this and more.

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The exhibition was curated by New York artist and writer Stephen Truax (who earned his BFA from RISD in 2007) alongside Dominic Molon, the museum’s Richard Brown Baker Curator of Contemporary Art. The show features forty artworks of varied media that were produced between 1954 and 2021. Packed with pieces that are full of frank beauty and emotion, this show doubles as an important record of historic change.

 

 

The centerpiece of the show is the towering installation work, Untitled (Couple), first conceptualized in 1993 by artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. The artwork, part column, and part cascade consists of two strings of lightbulbs that begin at the ceiling and culminate in an intermingled pile on the floor. The implication is one of two parallel lives becoming conjoined. Gonzalez-Torres, who died in 1996 from complications associated with AIDS, was the maker of often poignant artworks. In one of his most well-known works, Untitled (Portrait of Ross in LA), Gonzalez-Torres invited viewers to take away pieces of candy from a pile that initially weighed 175 pounds, his late partner’s weight. The work on view at the RISD Museum captures the same poetically and meditatively inclined outlook that defines much of the artist’s production.

 

 

In addition to installation work, the show features a number of stunning paintings, too. Artists Louis Fratino and Salman Toor each share images that capture languid bodies in repose. Mike, a fluidly painted portrait by Doron Langberg, shows off an artistic effect with sensuous results. Sholem Krishtalka’s Golden Hour is another testament to how alive and emotive a well-executed painting can be. Although modest in scale, it is a glittering piece about love and memory. Another fantastic painting, Hanna in the Mirror II, by RISD Associate Professor of Painting Angela Dufresne, deals in space, reflection, and the voyeuristic tendencies that come with celebrity culture. Much of the exhibition focuses on the concept of the gaze.

 

 

Beyond paintings, Any distance between us also boasts drawings, prints, and photographs. An Andy Warhol image from 1983 sensitively captures the artist Keith Haring and his partner Juan Dubose with cheeks touching and limbs entangled. Shots by Warhol contemporaries Nan Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe are highlights, too. Still other photographs by Catherine Opie and Deana Lawson bring viewers face-to-face with couples set against the shared backdrop of private domestic interiors.

The intimacy central to the show comes in various forms, whether the loving embrace of romantic partners or the shared space of familial bonds. In Kennedi Carter’s Untitled photographic self-portrait, she is pictured having her head shaved by her father who is just out of frame. In a quote from the artist on the accompanying label, she states the importance of representation in her own work. Carter is quoted as saying, in part, “I just think when I make my work I want to show different possibilities. I like telling Black stories and finding the ones that are often either underrepresented or ignored or that were left out.”

 

 

One key achievement of this exhibition is the documentation of progress in art history. For example, several of the artists featured in the show were avant-garde figures of the downtown scene in New York during the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s. Once working at the fringes of the art world, these artists and their respective concerns are now more firmly ensconced in the canon of art history. Their artworks are in numerous significant collections, are found in leading institutions, and are included in exhibitions such as the one on view now at the RISD Museum.

 

 

The movement of artists such as these from the periphery to the center is reflective of the change that can take place when representation is made more inclusive. With a broad spectrum of experiences on view, Any distance between us offers a thoughtful look at intimacy while continuing the work of welcoming more voices into the conversation.

Any distance between us is on view at the RISD Museum through March 13, 2022. To learn more about this exhibition and to plan your visit to the museum, visit www.risdmuseum.org.