Le gay voyage

This exhibition explores objects and their role in the production of identity. It is not merely about the selfthat demands to be sustained, performed or affirmed through material things at least, not entirely. Instead, it is a dispersion objects that anchor identity but also allow it to slip, to be rearranged, to evade fixed meaning. Or perhaps it is about the way objects mediate our sense ofself, drifting between personal history and collective imagination, between commodity and memory, between possession and loss.

Labor of love

The subject matter of 'self is fraught, painful, deeply political and intensely personal. It is difficult to question such work as artwithout questioning its fundamental meaning. This tension is central to Ville Laurinkoski's (b. 1996) practice, where Le gay voyage assembles a variety of elements: 1980s gay pornography, bookshelves, sound, sculptures and the firsttranslation of French activist, essayist, and theorist Guy Hocquenghem's book Le gay voyage (1980)'. These works are presented as a form ofseduction, much like how an advertisement entices the consumer. The work becomes a stage for bodies that have neverfully belonged - an object of intimacy, rest and coupling but also of confinement, expectation and domestication. Consider Gian Lorenzo Bernini's Ermafi rodito dormiente (1620) of a nude androgynous figure on a mattress carved in marble, which opens a paradox: flesh turned to stone, a softness upon a surface that can neveryield. Limbs press into a bed that cannot hold them. Here, the mattress is useful, notjust for its presence in art history but for its ability to carry contradic tions. It suggests weight but also resistance, comfort but also alienation. Beyond its borders, desire finds alternate places - spaces of movement rather than rest, where limbs do not sink but stand, lean, piss and press against surfaces built for encounters. Do you recognise the greasy fingers, your metal knees, plastic skin and curved belly of steel in this space? The sculptures are as aware ofthemselves as they are ofyou. It is a beautiful and kinky concept: a sculpture looking at you whilst touching itself - a role reversal ofsorts, or a caricature of how the principles of property intrude upon relations, thoughts, language and behaviors. It might sound orgasmic - not sexually but as a kind ofoutpouring, moment of understanding and a willingness to lose, or expose, oneself.

Heaven is a place on Earth?

The formation of the self can be a violent act. It is also an act that cannot occur alone: it is influenced, sometimes controlled, by the institutions around us*. Throughout the exhibition there are iterations of couples - works that present themselves in series that make the standard and stereotyped perceptible. Laurinkoski surrenders to repetition and considers how pairs are treated and often given advantages that drives individuals to conform to societal rules in pursuit of financial benefits®. Coupling, then, is notjust about companionship but also about the labor of maintaining independence. The 'merging ofart and life' has many historical precedents: from early Dada and 1960s happenings to the activism-driven art ofthe 1970s and 1980s, from relational aesthetics in the 1990s to today, artists have created experiences that function simultaneously as artworks and as 'real life. The exhibition presents a polarized duality: the culture we consume and the bodies we exploit. Laurinkoski's approach to art is about what it means to have an agencywithin the cultural conditions and systems of late capitalist life which embodies conflicting experiences ofcomplicity by using elements ofthe structures itselfto retain freedom. Identity is perhaps defined less by shared political interests than by what we purchase. Nike' promotes self-improvement, and IKEA® promotes democracy. Red Bull once used the slogan Redbull Gives You Wings, not long aftera class action was brought against them, saying that people had been drinking Red Bull excessively and never gottheir actual wings. Heaven has to wait. Laurinkoski's work articulates itself as a replica of a replica of a replica'. A readymade made real.

The real world

But the point of cruising, or at least one point of cruising, is feeling that the city belongs to you, to you and maybe a chance upon someone else like you. Is there by chance someone else wandering around this room? Might that be someone else on the prowl? Could the two ofyou find a place where you could get together? After all, you feel real when you talk aboutthe real with someone real. The fluorescent sun glares unnaturally bright over the exhibition. As you move slowlythrough the room, youreyes catch and wrap around different works of art. Your body pulses, a rhythm lingering in your muscles. Moving at all can feel slightly painful yet inevitable as if the sounds around you have seeped into your bones, propelling you forward in an endless, back-and-forth hip sway. At some point in the exhibition, you might meet someone. They mightwhisper, PleASure drawing outthe word, giving itthe same hissing electronic timbre that still lingers in your ear. You might smile knowingly. This fleeting moment, this charged encounter is what the admission" really gets you.