Peter Clough

"So began my criminal life, then punishable by the laws of the state of Ohio – at the time – by about twenty years imprisonment, I guess. Each time. Total incarceration in Ohio: between five and six thousand years."

– Samuel Stuard, unpublished memoirs, in reference to the criminalization of oral sex between men in the 1920s

Haul Gallery is pleased to announce Head, a solo show by multidisciplinary artist Peter Clough. Head continues Clough’s ongoing investigation into the ways that stigma and desire come together in shaping sexual identity, with a particular focus on kink and gender fluidity. Bringing together projection, sculpture, painting, photography and textiles, the works in Head are both uncomfortably intimate and playfully tongue-in-cheek.

Dominating much of the gallery is the titular work of the show, Head, a largely abstract textile celebrating the joys of fellatio. The textile itself is stitched from fabric digitally printed with images of the inside of Clough’s mouth and throat, alongside close-up images of skin from the penis of one of Clough’s partners. Pink, glistening, visceral, these two swaths of flesh, abstracted and yet charged, mingle and become one. The textile, which Clough conceptualizes as a banner or a flag, is lit with projection mapped abstractions of the act itself.

Alongside this large textile, Clough presents a series of small sculptural collages, self-portraits of his own face — heads in another sense. Made from wood, paint, fabric and photographs of Clough’s body, each collage is a deconstruction and reassembly of Clough’s visage. Small model walkways, assembled from balsa wood like a model of a theatrical stage set, snake through the works. Little photographic versions of Clough himself inhabit these spaces, clothed in a variety of fetish wear – leather harnesses, rubber catsuits, pink lacy panties. Perfectly at home in Haul’s dungeon-like gallery space, the works in Head interrogate the idea of self, pulling apart the flesh to uncover what lies underneath.

Peter Clough was born in Boston in 1984 and received an MFA from NYU Steinhardt in 2009. He has presented work in New York at MoMA PS1, Printed Matter, Fresh Window Gallery, Microscope Gallery, Southfirst Gallery, Wayfarers Gallery, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, Spring/Break Art Fair, the Center for Performance Research, and Dixon Place Theater, in Pittsburg at the Andy Warhol Museum, in L.A. at Human Resources, in Nashville at Open Lot, in Berlin at Peres Projects and Space/Time at Flutgraben e.V., in Seoul at Konkuk University and The House of Collections, in Antwerp at the Monty, in Ghent at Off/off Cinema and in Oslo at Kunstnernes Hus, Fotogalleriet, and Soppen Performance Festival at Ekebergparken. Clough’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, and Time Out magazine. Clough lives and works in New York.

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