New work from Stories from the Closet.
The four figures in the center are contemporary — men of the 2020s. The suited gentleman on the right is Troy Donahue, the 1950s Hollywood heartthrob, representing an era when respectability and concealment were the same thing. The figure on the left is JW King, celebrated gay adult film star of the 1980s, who represented something else entirely — visibility, defiance, and the brief extraordinary window of sexual liberation before AIDS changed everything.
The intent was to bring representations of the male figure across the decades into the same space. Dressed versus undressed. Hidden versus visible. The constraints of the 1950s in conversation with the liberation of the 1980s and the relative freedom of today.
They never could have existed in the same room in real life. That impossibility is precisely the point.
The pink moon and the Jupiter 2 keep watch overhead, as always.
