June 25 through July 23, 2022
Opening Reception: Saturday, June 25, 6-9 pm
The fourth installment of Bermudez Projects’ groundbreaking look into the future of art arrives Saturday in Cypress Park, with FAST FORWARD | The Future is Queer.
America is finally beginning to open up to treating art by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ on a par with the white male art world. But, as Bermudez Projects founder Julian Bermudez says, “We were celebrating Queer art and artists even before we opened our first space over a decade ago.”
The Future Is Queer, however, is the gallery’s first group show comprised entirely of Queer artists from all spectrums and sub-cultures. The exhibit brings together Blue Chip stars like Keith Haring, icons like Devan Shimoyama, and mid-career anchors of the gay community like Enrique Castrejon, Ruben Esparza and Miguel Angel Reyes. Plus, emerging talents Adam Chuck, Robert Martin, Andrew Norris, John S. Rabe, and transgender artist Kess Kin.
Devan Shimoyama’s glittery, eye-catching mixed-media painting, Let Me Help captures a pair of queer Black figures in a moment of tenderness, strength, power, and supercharged sexual energy.
Hancock Park Pool Party by Miguel Angel Reyes is a delicious smorgasbord of eye-candy offered up in one painting. Half-naked men glistening from the wetness of the pool, sun-kissed and enjoying the idyllic setting.
John S. Rabe’s New American Gothic wittily places one of the country’s most recognizable gay couples – George and Brad Takei – into Grant Wood’s American Gothic. The photomontage says,
“we’re queer and we’re here, Middle America,” but also shows that gay married life is exactly as mundane as straight married life.
And, both Middle and Rural America are sprinkled with Queer dust, as is seen in Andrew Norris’s Orville Peck as The Blue Boy and Robert Martin’s Two Bucks series of reimagined gay dive bar imagery.
In addition to paintings, prints, drawings, collage, and installations, the exhibit will present films by artists who are blurring the lines between art-house films and pornography, like Noel Alejandro’s The End and Jake Jaxson’s and RJ Sebastian’s A Thing of Beauty.
“With this exhibit we get to celebrate all the many facets of what it is to be queer: beauty, magic, joy, sorrow, friendships, and sex,” says Bermudez. “And, for the first time, we get to pull out all the stops and embrace the many aspects of our community within the context of art, which is always our guiding principle.”
A note for attendees: While children have always been a welcome presence at Bermudez Projects, this exhibit does include more explicit – albeit sex-positive – images than usual.
FAST FORWARD is a 5-part series presenting works by key figures in Black, Latinx, Women, and Queer art history, juxtaposed with works from a select group of emerging artists.
The complete list of artists in FAST FORWARD | The Future Is Queer:
Noel Alejandro
Tad Beck
Enrique Castrejon
Fabián Cháirez
Adam Chuck
Ruben Esparza
Keith Haring
Jake Jaxson & RJ Sebastian
Kess Kin
Jeremy Kost
Matt Lambert
Robert Martin
Travis Matthews
Maximiliano Navarrete
Andrew Norris
John S. Rabe
Miguel Angel Reyes
Paul Mpagi Sepuya
Devan Shimoyama
Evan Wong