Male Fashion Models Make Conceptual Art (2005-08), Joe Sola
Solo Solo is an ongoing exhibition series in which one curator selects one artwork to constitute the entire exhibition.
Solo Solo #3: Jenée Misraje selects Joe Sola’s Male Fashion Models Make Contemporary Art (2005-08) for London.
Image courtesy the artist
Under the gaze of an audience, four shirtless, professional male models will create works of art, following the artist’s simple guidelines to use all of the materials provided and remain on a platform during the course of the opening. The results of the models’ creative output that evening will be left in the space. Recalling the traditional role between male artist and female model, Sola allows for a role reversal, wherein the models are not simply hyper-masculine, erotic subjects, but the actual producers of a new installation.
Joe Sola’s previous projects include: being chased, tackled and piled on by high school football players, riding on roller coaster rides with award-winning male porn stars, hiring female escorts to attend his openings and ‘work the crowd’ with all expenses covered by the artist and gallery. His most enduring video from 2004 to 2005 is Studio Visit, in which the artist jumped out his studio window in the middle of meetings, crashing through glass, leaving curators, dealers and writers confused and stunned. Sola has recently had solo shows at P/M Gallery in Toronto and Bucket Rider Gallery in Chicago. His work has been included in the California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach (2003), Gimme Shelter at Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2002), Taking A Bullet at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Los Angeles (2005), Reckless Behavior at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles (2006), Dark Mirror: Artists Videos at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2008). Sola’s work will be included in the upcoming exhibition Hard Targets at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, concurrent with Solo Solo in London. This exhibition will then grow, adding other artists (Mathew Barney, Paul Pfeiffer, Richard Prince) and traveling to museums for several years through the iCI.
CLICK HERE for exhibition catalogue
Jenée Misraje is based in Los Angeles and on the curatorial staff at the Hammer Museum as Exhibition Coordinator. Past projects include: The End of the End of the Line at The Soap Factory in Minneapolis with Joseph del Pesco (2003) and Art and The Afterall Effect at Playspace Gallery, San Francisco with Meredith Goldsmith (2004). She has managed numerous land and site-related works, including San Francisco-based New Langton Arts Terrain Terroir and projects by artists Christoph Büchel, Edgar Arceneaux, and Charles Gaines. Currently, she serves on several advisory boards: YARD magazine, 12 Duffield: The Glen Seator Foundation and greenmuseum.org and her writing has appeared in several publications including X-TRA Contemporary Art Quarterly, ArtLies, contributing essays to the exhibition catalogues for Downtime: Constructing Leisure, Modern and Contemporary: Lannan Collection at The Art Institute of Chicago and Bill Viola: Stations. Recent and forthcoming projects include an exhibition of the work of Erlea Maneros for the Fellows of Contemporary Art’s Curatorial Laboratory project and Reclaiming: Inter-generations with Renée Fox and Kate Harding at 625 Carondelet for Otis College of Art’s Homecoming programme this fall.