MIT LIST Visual Arts Center
February 5 to April 4, 2010
Reception: February 4, 6-8pm
Virtuoso Illusion: Cross Dressing and the New Media Avant-Garde explores what has traditionally been called gender crossing or cross-dressing (drag) as a tactic for media artists that has been central to the development of the current avant-garde. The show explores how experimental art has been invigorated and advanced by artists who cross dress for many different reasons as part of their conceptual process. It is not intended as an exploration of identity issues specifically, but more as an in depth look at current and historical strategies of cross dressing as an art of the irrational, the unexpected. This exhibition is organized by guest curator Michael Rush, former director of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University.
For several artists working today, cross dressing is not even an apt term. For video artist Ryan Trecartin, for example, gender appearances are just that, appearances. In his dizzyingly fast-paced videos, sexual leaps are one part of a multitasking language system that communicates multiple perspectives on his characters’ lives. For performance artist John Kelly, drag (a term he does use) is a theatrical tool applied to a character, like any other tool he might use in a non-drag performance. In Michelle Handelman’s work, lesbians, drag queens, women playing men playing women create a post-gender scenario not so different from many second-life experiments on the web. (press release excerpt)
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