黑料不打烊

Gladstone Gallery is pleased to present a career-spanning exhibition of works by Robert Mapplethorpe curated by artist Arthur Jafa. Comprised of both the iconic studio photographs that are synonymous with Mapplethorpe鈥檚 oeuvre as well as a selection of his rarely exhibited Polaroids, Jafa employs the visual sequencing found throughout his own work to reconfigure and destabilize our understanding of the familiar. Orbiting around the concept that re-oriented chains of connotation imbue culturally entrenched imagery with new narrative power, Jafa proposes a fresh reading of works that have long been embraced as art-historical canon. 

Breaching the tacit barricades that quarantine Mapplethorpe鈥檚 classically composed studio work from his notoriously unmitigated depictions of gay sexuality, Jafa鈥檚 image selection spans the full arc of Mapplethorpe鈥檚 practice. Silver gelatin portraits and still-lifes are displayed with a series of Polaroids that fluctuate between the tender and the transgressive, all of which are granted equal footing in Jafa鈥檚 hierarchy-leveling hands. Suggesting that visual information can supply narrative meaning in much the same way as a text, Jafa鈥檚 sequencing re-examines the issues of agency and power that reverberate throughout both Mapplethorpe鈥檚 work and his own. 

Of particular interest to Jafa is the literal and metaphorical space between Mapplethorpe and his subjects, the delicate balance between intimacy and formalism that often charges the photographer鈥檚 imagery. Sam Wagstaff is here presented as both a lover and public figure鈥攁n object of erotic desire and a revered mentor whose varying depictions in Mapplethorpe鈥檚 work trespass simultaneously on the public and the private. Portraits of celebrated artists are confronted with the anonymous gazes of reclining nudes, while lush landscapes abut with landscapes of the body. Each choice made by Mapplethorpe is met by one from Jafa, resulting in a series of choreographed interactions between the two artists. 

Echoing Mapplethorpe鈥檚 practice of constructing narrative threads throughout his oeuvre via framing, cropping, and comparison (the flower mirrors human genitalia because the eye locates the logic in this proposition), Jafa鈥檚 use of sequencing as a rhetorical device examines not only Mapplethorpe鈥檚 formal practice but the dynamic emotional and social implications of authorship itself.