JONESY PRESENTS HOT ACTION AT ARTPACE

Jonesy

In Residence: May 23 – Jul 25, 2022

Exhibition: Jul 21 – Sep 11, 2022


During his residence at Artpace, Jonesy transformed the gallery space into a hyper-stylized filmset inspired by intimate spaces for queer men, such as gay bars, sex clubs, and bathhouses, for a forthcoming erotic thriller. Projected on the east wall and within the 1988 Ford Ranger Truck are vignettes from the in-progress film made in collaboration with artist and choreographer Lindsey Taylor, cast members Dany Casey, Errin Deplerdang, Cowboi Dukes, Angelica McAuley, and Kate Taylor, and camera and sound by Stephen Fishman.  

Inspired by the troupes of the erotic thriller, a narrative and cinematic format that gained wide popularity throughout the 1980s, Jonesy subverts the stereotypical expectations of these films and men’s intimate spaces by focusing on women’s desires as dictated by the predominantly female cast. Utilizing a queer, historical perspective, the performers are sharing their own ideas of what these spaces could be if they were more available to others.  

Alongside the video pieces, JONESY PRESENTS HOT ACTION AT ARTPACE includes objects from the film set, a print made in collaboration with Jamie C. Knight of the die Kränken Collective, and an audio piece by Austin-based duo Toxic Water playing throughout the gallery. 

The Artist Would Like to Thank

Lindsey Taylor, Craig Biesker, Tom Borgese, and David Evans Frantz for project development. 

Spencer Elliott for special assistance, construction, and development. 

Photographic models, Brian Alt, Stephen Funk, Jan G., Gavin Garcia, Javier Reyes Lopez, Patrick Pearson, Tomás Rivera, and Saint John.  

Artist Megan Solis for her opening night performance as well as Sarah Fox for her assistance and Monae Sims for her camerawork and documentation.  

Ruben Luna, Dominic Jimenez, Hyland O’Brien, Joe De La Cruz, Shaine Newhouse, Chloe Harthan, and Madison Feik for their gallery production assistance.  

Riley Robinson, Christian Ramírez, Chris Mills, Crystal Conchas, Ashley Mireles, and the staff at Artpace.  

Special thanks to Summer 2022 Guest Curator Andy Campbell and fellow residents Hellen Ascoli and Betelhem Makonnen. 

Sponsors

The International Artist-in-Residence program is supported through generous donations from the Linda Pace Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the John L. Santikos Charitable Foundation of the San Antonio Area Foundation, The Parker Foundation, Inc., the Howard and Betty Halff Charitable Fund, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.   

Artist

Jonesy

Los Angeles, California, USA

Jonesy (b. 1967, Allentown, PA) is an artist and filmmaker working in Los Angeles. He studied photography and video at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA. In the 1990s, he was a member of the queercore band Fagbash in San Francisco, which continues to inform his aesthetic. Since 2008, he has been creating films, music, installations, and performance.  

In 2015, Jonesy founded die Kränken after researching the extensive holdings of Southern California gay motorcycle clubs at ONE Archives at the University of Southern California (USC) Libraries. Inspired by the renegade ethos, macho posturing, and outlandish camp performances of these groups, die Kränken explored queer motorcycle history through a multi-part video installation and catalogue to accompany the exhibition at ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. The project paid homage to the past gay motorcycle clubs while probing their history to imagine new possibilities for queer culture, past and future. In 2018, while showing at Klowden-Mann Gallery in Los Angeles, he conceived Jonesy’s PACK, a multimedia installation and performance where he invited 22 artists to construct vests or ‘cuts’ in a manner that recalls the initiation ritual of gangs. The artists viewed their “cuts” not only as an expression of their individual identity but as an exploration of the idea of icons and iconography, many choosing to represent figures significant to them and to their community. The performance was modeled on a hybrid of a drag king show, fashion catwalk, and a beer bust, hosted by Lexington Vaughn, a recurring collaborator in Jonesy’s body of work. Jonesy’s PACK continued his investigation into how we codify, project, and perform our identities and how we use iconography to make our identities readable to the world—especially for those with the commonality of experience to recognize the language we use in our performance.  

Jonesy’s work is populated by queer collaborators of various ages, racial and ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, and body types. His work forefronts the expressive language of inclusion, power, belonging, and representation among subcultures, including the queer community of which he is a part.  

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Curator

Andy Campbell

Los Angeles, California, USA

Andy Campbell is an art historian, critic, and curator whose work foregrounds LGBTQ communities and their archives as wellsprings for alternative histories of art and design. He is the author of two books, Queer X Design: 50 Years of Signs, Symbols, Banners, Logos, and Graphic Art of LGBTQ and Bound Together: Leather, Sex, Archives, and Contemporary Art. Recently he curated (with Patty Chang) Live Artists Live III: Despair/Repair, a performance art program examining catastrophe and healing in the context of the 2020 U.S. election and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. His writings have appeared in Artforum, The Invisible Archive, X-TRA, GLQ, Aperture, and other venues. He lives in Long Beach, California, and works in Los Angeles, where he is an Associate Professor of Critical Studies at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design. 

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