➤ FLORAL, from p.58
every life there is an end but that
end is unforeseeable.
Another in the series was meant
as a personal tribute from Bleckner
to the subject, Dr. Donald M. Kaplan,
a psychoanalyst who taught
at NYU whom Bleckner regards as
having been “a wonderful teacher
to me.”
These works were transported
to Logan’s studio in the city of
Regina, Saskatchewan, where he
drew weeds and abstract shapes
on them.
“You could say Zachari brought
the obituaries back to life,” Bleckner
said.
The title of the exhibition is an
homage to the book of the same
name by Polish journalist Ryszard
Kapu ci ski (1932-2007). The book’s
contents — the writer’s travels as a
foreign correspondent around the
continent of Africa — and its cover
image, a photograph of the back of
a weary ferryman at the bow of a
canoe as it reaches an arid shore,
by French photographer Françoise
Huguier, intrigued Wayne Baerwaldt,
one of the show’s co-curators.
“There is no shadow here,” he
said. “The sun in coming straight
down…I was interested in this title
as something of a paradox” about
luminosity.
The notion fi t with Bleckner’s
work. “A lot of times I’ll start paintings
by painting them black and
then trying to fi nd their way out into
light,” he said. One of the strongest
examples of this process is his oilon
paper painting Untitled (2008),
which is luminous fl owers against
a black background that is baffl ing
to the eye. In creating it, Bleckner
said, “I was able to go back into the
light from the dark, which is something
I like to do.”
The centerpiece in one of the
exhibition rooms is Logan’s sculpture,
Fountain 1 (2013). It is a ceramic
pedestal crowned and skirted
by overgrown tangles of fl owers,
leaves and tendrils. The work looks
simultaneously commemorative
and forgotten, a man-made imposition
on the land onto which the
land has reimposed itself. Logan
left the clay unpainted because,
he says, the material is “the color
of bones.” Added to the sculpture’s
color, its brittle, unglazed form has
to be repaired and recomposed every
time the piece is shown, further
Ross Bleckner, Untitled, 2008, to the right.
reminiscent of ossifi cation.
“It comes right back to implications
of my body in the place
where I live,” Logan said. “How I’m
affected by it and it is affected by
me.” He is referring, he says, to the
presence of his own body as a settler
on Native land, Saskatchewan,
and the bones reminiscent of the
now extinct buffalo whose slaughter
was integral to settler colonialism.
“My body is always a catalyst
for my work regardless of whether
or not it’s a depiction of myself,” he
said.
“It absolutely does have this
sense of the memorial or commemorative
to it,” said Baerwaldt. “The
Canadian government was out to
eradicate the buffalo – the main
source of food for Native peoples…
to starve Natives off the Prairies.
So, I think in this idea of using
bone-colored fl owers as a tribute, a
sad commemoration, has another
set of roots.”
Logan was also inspired by a
2009 visit he and husband Ned
paid to the gay icon Oscar Wilde’s
tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery,
in Paris. Approaching it from a distance,
Logan noticed the blanket of
red lipstick marks covering much
of the exterior and initially thought
it was moss. Only upon closer inspection
did he realize it was the
work of Wilde enthusiasts participating
in a ritual to, for some admire
Wilde’s queerness, for others
admonish his misogyny.
“For me, it was like this infl aming
of this tomb,” Logan said. “All
these people coming together and,
sort of, changing this monument,
one kiss at a time.”
Much of the collaboration between
Bleckner and Logan pertains
to space and place, in reaching
and teaching one another’s
geography by speaking through a
language of fl ora.
“A lot of my work has to do
with putting things on and taking
things away,” said Bleckner.
“What’s left is not-a-fl ower. It was
something, but now, now it’s just a
mark, a painted mark. So, it’s like
a memory of a fl ower. You know,
after they’re gone, that’s what’s
left.”
Nicholas Boston, Ph.D., is an
associate professor of media studies
at Lehman College of the City
University of New York (CUNY),
and author of “The Amorous Migrant:
Race, Relationships and
Resettlement” (Temple University
Press).
STEFAN HAGEN
NICHOLAS BOSTON
Zachari Logan, “Completing Wall Drawing.”
June 24 - June 30, 2 60 021 | GayCityNews.com
/GayCityNews.com
