Soft Landing recreates the harem — in contemporary terms of American masculinity — as a study in containment.
Where Ingres’ bathers are attended to and observed by a gaze positioned entirely outside the frame, the man in this collage is staged in a similar fashion, dressed in the branding of a different century’s silk.
The comparison is about a culture, like Ingres’ world, where in this case straight and queer men alike are held captive inside the same structure, the closet, neither one built, nor can fully escaped.
— Behan
