Flanagan’s Wake

Julie Becker, Nayland Blake, Bob Flanagan, Robert Gober, Jack Goldstein, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mike Kelley, Monica Majoli, Amy O’Neill, Michael Queenland, Sheree Rose, George Stoll

Curated by Sabrina Tarasoff

Set the stage to domestic darkness. An idea is found in the undertow of left-on fairy lights following some kind of grand fête. Dimmed images appear in the fragile atmosphere of last night’s memory loss. A crushing comedown. Tinsel and serpentines shimmer against a marble-heavy heart. Gut-wrenching lines hang still in the air as garlanded into festive form. Balloons can weigh as much as the pre-occupied mind as it shapes refrains in the aftermath of things said. What is left behind often amounts to a poetic atmosphere. In this case, courted in the debris and scatter of the significant event is a poetics of restraint. Death, play, performance, eroticism, and release are bound into the leftovers of what was loved. This exhibition is a small monument to the poetic works of Bob Flanagan (1952-1996.) It is a wedding of everything, a wake, the waking light on what really happened: ‘explosions, fireworks, ka-boom.’ [1]

1 - Flanagan, Bob. “The Real Story,” in The Kid Is The Man (Bombshelter Press, 1980)