Photo by Bryson Rand
Odalisque is a new performance by Peter Clough in which he reimagines the classical reclining nude as a gender non-conforming queer bondage submissive. Sculpture, projection, text, live performance, and music come together in an immersive environment that complicates power relations between sub and Dom, viewer and performer, subject and object.
Custom bondage furniture restrains Clough’s body in the position of a classical reclining nude. While his physical body is restrained and his mouth gagged, digital projections of his hands and face, actively moving and speaking, reinscribe his subjectivity and his power. Clough’s words, alternately political, poetic, narrative and analytical, blend seamlessly with music and sound scapes by noise artist Peter Kalisch. A figure representing the Dom, played by performance artist Adam Liam Rose, wears a digitally reproduced mask of Clough’s face. Together, this sensuous and haunting work takes on the seeming contradictions within the queer submissive consciousness: experiencing restraint as comforting, experiencing humiliation as affirming, experiencing exposure as a kind of armor, and experiencing bondage as freedom.
The performance is accompanied by a limited edition zine by Jesse Cline and Peter Clough. The zine features collages made from the source material for the performance, mashups of classical paintings with Clough's collection of bondage porn, alongside the full text from the piece, which can function as both BDSM erotica and as essays on finding empowerment and agency through objectification and submission.
Odalisque
a performance by Peter Clough
Music by Peter Kalisch
The Dom played by Adam Liam Rose
Zine by Jesse Cline and Peter Clough
Peter Clough's interdisciplinary work uses video, sound, sculpture, and perofrmance to address the queer body as a personal and political site of trauma, stigma, desire and empowerment. Clough was born in Boston in 1984 and received an MFA from NYU Steinhardt in 2009. He has presented work in New York at MoMA PS1, Printed Matter, Fresh Window Gallery, Microscope Gallery, Southfirst Gallery, Wayfarers Gallery, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Fair, the Center for Performance Research, and Dixon Place Theater, in Pittsburg at the Andy Warhol Museum, in L.A. at Human Resources, in Nashville at Open Lot, in Berlin at Peres Projects and Space/Time at FLUTGRABEN e.V., in Seoul at Konkuk University and The House of Collections, in Antwerp at the Monty, in Ghent at Off/off Cinema and in Oslo at Kunstnernes Hus, Fotogalleriet, and SOPPEN Performance Festival at Ekebergparken. Clough’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, and Time Out magazine. Clough lives and works in New York.
Jesse Cline is a graphic designer, digital artist, and educator interested in contemporary systems of representation and production, as well as the consequent appropriation and subversion of those systems. In 2016 Cline co-founded Partial Shade, a nomadic curatorial project dedicated to showing work in unconventional spaces. Cline received a BS in Electronic Media, Art and Communication from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an MFA in Design from the University of Texas at Austin.
Peter Kalisch is a performance artist and noise musician based in Los Angeles. Kalisch's work strives to shine light on postmodern conditions leading to interpersonal disconnections. Kalisch's body of work is an attempt at self-awareness and an encouragement to others to remove themselves from patterns of self-victimization. Kalisch was born in Escondido, CA in 1995 and received a BFA from Otis College of Art and Design in 2018. Kalisch has performed for OUTFEST, Queer Biennial, The Broad Museum, The Getty Museum, Re:art show, as well as a variety of underground warehouse and nightlife venues.
Adam Liam Rose is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, photography, video and installation. Born in Jerusalem in 1990 and raised mostly in the United States, Rose has exhibited at museums and institutions including the Jewish Museum (New York, NY), the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL), Javits Convention Centre (New York, NY), Mana Contemporary (Chicago, IL), Sullivan Galleries (Chicago, IL), Ortega Y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY), and the Pfizer Building (New York, NY), to name a few. He was a fellow at the Bronx Museum of the Arts' AIM Program, the Art & Law Program in New York, and is a recipient of an Artis Contemporary Residency Grant. Rose was awarded artist residencies at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art (Omaha, NE), Ox-Bow School of Art (Saugatuck, MI), A-Z West: Institute of Investigative Living (Joshua Tree, CA), the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and the Chicago Artists Coalition's HATCH Residency (Chicago, IL). Rose received a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ('12) and an MFA from Columbia University School of the Arts (‘17). He lives and works in Brooklyn.
Date + Time
Saturday, May 18
8–10pm
Admission
Free
Location
The Main Gallery
51 Bergen St.