“Bruce LaBruce’s Polaroid Rage, Survey 2000-2010”
from 19 February through 19 March 2011 The Gallery Wrong Weather Avenida da Boavista, 754, Porto
The exhibition – his Portugal debut – is composed of a set of 300 Polaroids, taken by the Canadian artist, that document a series of performances between 2000 and 2010. Besides being a writer, director, photographer and “reluctant pornographer”, his performative work is fundamental to the understanding of a revolutionary, artistic and political sensibility. Among those outstanding performances, there is the one, developed in conjunction with Slava Mogutin, called Anarchist Wrestling, that was held at the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh.
As a filmmaker, Bruce LaBruce is an unavoidable name. His filmography includes contemporary cult movies such as No Skin Off My Ass (1991), Hustler White (1996 – featuring Tony Ward), The Raspberry Reich (2004 – shown at more than 150 cinema festivals around the world) or Otto, or Up with Dead People (2008 – premiered at the Sundance Festival and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, November 2008).
His latest film, L.A. Zombie, featuring François Sagat, premiered in competition at the Locarno International Film Festival in August, 2010. It was also shown at the Toronto and Vancouver International Film Festivals.
Bruce has been a regular contributor, as a writer and photographer, for publications such as Index, Eye, Exclaim, Dutch, Vice, The National Post, Nerve.com, Black Book and Butt. His work as a fashion photographer has been published by Dazed and Confused, Bon, Tank, Tetu, Fake, Attitude, Blen, Tokion, Purple Fashion and The National Post. He has also recently conducted a controversial interview with Karl Lagerfeld for Vice Magazine.
Throughout the years he has exhibited his work at, among others, The Pitt Gallery in Vancouver, MC MAGMA in Milan, the Bailey Fine Arts Gallery in Toronto, Peres Projects in San Francisco, L.A. and Berlin, and The Alleged Gallery and John Connelly Presents in New York. In 2006 he presented Polaroid Rage: A Survey of Polaroids 2000-2006 at Gallery 1313 in Toronto. The exhibit at The Gallery Wrong Weather is an updated version of that show.
He has also collaborated with artists such as Terence Koh, Slava Mogutin and Kembra Pfhaler, who some might remember as the face in a series of portraits by Katrina del Mar, recently exhibited at The Gallery Wrong Weather and also in a limited edition T-shirt.
Angelique Bosio’s documentary Bruce LaBruce: The Advocate of Fagdom will premier in 2011. The official synopsis reads: “At turns, a transgressive artist in the purest sense of the term, the spiritual son of Kenneth Anger and John Waters, or leader of the Queercore movement, one thing is certain : Bruce LaBruce makes small budget movies full of hardcore sex, political messages and containing as much violence as tenderness, in which he happily crushes any gay attitude clichés while practicing ironic self glorification, mocks any horror movie or dramatic set ups, and avoids all fashionable art trends. Bruce maddens, irritates, enchants, charms, fascinates and mostly keeps the LaBruce mystery very much alive.
A complex personality at war not with a system but all systems. The portrait of a man constantly moving between his punk attitude and extreme sensibility.” Bruce LaBruce’s Polaroid Rage, Survey 2000-2010 is a strong, guttural, revolutionary exhibition that illuminates the ideas behind a controversial body of work and the man behind it.
The exhibition is curated by Rui Carvalho da Silva.
It will be held at The Gallery Wrong Weather, Avenida da Boavista, 754, Porto from 19 February through 19 March. Entry is free. Open Monday through Saturday, from 10:30 to 19:30.
