Föenander Galleries is proud to present Oliver Cain’s pop up exhibition: ‘They Were Roommates’ by Oliver Cain.

Where:
Ponsonby Central 136 Ponsonby Road, Ponsonby, Auckland 1011

When:
Opening event 15th Feb 6-9pm
Exhibition runs from 14 – 20 February from 10am – 6pm

Proceeds from the sale of work in this exhibition raises money for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. A continued series of works that references the figure and gently probes at confronting and challenging issues surrounding sexuality, gender and identity. Using ambiguity and stereotypes these playful works deconstruct the notions of sexuality and queer identity.

These minimal paintings with their clean black lines, bright block colours and concealed text, are deceptively simple, yet offer a compounded complexity focusing’ in on the body, how its’ viewed, employed and interpreted. Utilising the slick visual language of advertising (and it’s employment of the body) alongside themes and subtle undercurrents of Art History, Cain’s work points to the shift in focus of the male gaze. His clean reductive style evokes both a visual and spatial experience of the world around us, playfully toying with assumptions surrounding gender expression and identity, all of which are grafted onto the physical body.

Celebration of the male form certainly has a rich artistic precedence – from classical Greek sculptures of disrobed hero’s as exemplars of ‘masculinity’, to the subtle undertones of homoerotic desire. While a number of work from antiquity and beyond may have eroticised the male nude in carefully guarded ways, the opportunity to openly celibate the male form from a queer perspective is something altogether more recent.