LGBTQ+ art show 'Out Taos' a mixed bag

TAOS — President Donald Trump has signed numerous executive orders in his second term that imperil the health and safety of LGBTQ+ individuals, but you wouldn’t know that from viewing “Out Taos,” an eclectic LGBTQ+ art exhibition that’s curiously divorced from the urgency of the political moment.

Avian Thorson Rogers’ hand-painted enamel sign, “Eat the Rich,” is one of the few political pieces in the show, and it has nothing to do with LGBTQ+ identity. It’s also a fairly shallow one-liner, which is unfortunate, since the rest of Rogers’ work is emotionally and aesthetically riveting. The artist uses a range of techniques, from taxidermy to encaustic wax painting, to explore trauma, grief and mortality. Literally anything else from their studio would have made a better choice for the exhibition.

The same could be said for Price Valentine, an outstanding installation and performance artist, whose tiny monochrome paintings included here are seriously underwhelming.

Then there’s Tom Rogers’ “Ob La Di/Ob La Da.” Just as the eponymous Beatles song is the most irritating in their entire catalog, Rogers’ painting of bubbles and stripes is uncharacteristically irksome. The pattern is reminiscent of cheap birthday party wrapping paper, while the coral and chartreuse color combination is physically nauseating. Yes, I am aware of the contemporary discourse surrounding “queer abstraction,” where anti-formalist strategies are used to subvert binary thinking. But other recent paintings by the same artist, including “Halcyon Game,” “To Points Unknown” and “Candyman 2,” produce intrigue, not revulsion. I wish those had been included instead.

Better examples of queer abstraction in “Out Taos” include Steven Lennert’s zig-zagging wool tapestry — a bold queering of Taos weaving traditions — and J. Matthew Thomas’ chopped-up sewing patterns, which deconstruct stereotypes of gendered labor.

Thomas is not only one of the best artists in the show, he is also its curator. He organized “Out Taos” by means of an open call, which he circulated widely in hopes of attracting under-recognized LGBTQ+ artisans and makers across Taos County, not just professional gallery artists. And because he wanted to be as inclusive as possible, he accepted all 30 artists who applied, although he said he spoke with each one to help them select which works to include.

I admire his focus on community building and inclusivity. And one serendipitous byproduct of the exhibition was the establishment of an oral history project, where the participating LGBTQ+ artists documented their own stories of being “out” in Taos. Thomas plans to continue that project in the coming months and years, creating an ever-expanding intergenerational archive of queer art history in the region, which will be a great resource. If you visit “Out Taos,” you can read each artist’s story on a wall panel next to their work, and some of the stories are quite moving.

Having said that, I just can’t shake the feeling that “Out Taos” is a disjointed mess. I’m sorry. It probably seems unfair to criticize a show for lacking cohesion when the whole point was to be as accepting and inclusive as possible. But with so much art crammed together — the show is claustrophobically overhung — it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff. When you hang what looks like a thrift store painting next to a highly intellectual found object sculpture by Hilary Nelson, the bad devalues the good, and it all just kind of ends up looking like junk.

Another disappointing aspect of “Out Taos” is that none of the work is erotic. I mean, I get it. Queer art doesn’t have to be political or erotic. But the almost complete erasure of both politics and eroticism from the show made me wonder if the artists were self-censoring. Where is the passion?

The only examples of full-frontal nudity are Jonah Mitropoulos’ wooden relief sculptures of creatures with human bodies and the heads of carnivorous birds. One appears male and the other female, so the pair could be mistaken for a heterosexual couple, although their trans-species metamorphosis is probably best interpreted as a metaphor for queerness. Mitropoulos’ relief sculptures are in conversation with Lauren Willsie’s painting of a scantily clad femme with the head and wings of a fly — another standout in the show. Both artists use humor, pathos and Kafkaesque bodily transformations to express feelings of being othered, or simply not fitting in.

There’s more good art in “Out Taos,” including pieces by Ellieangel Magdalene, Tyrell Tapaha, c. marquez, Juniper Vaughn and Jaime C. Knight, which are all worth seeing. There’s a lot of mediocre stuff, too, and I don’t fault Thomas for including it. I just wish he had found a way to give each artist’s work more space to breathe. Grouping works thematically on different walls would have gone a long way toward helping visitors navigate the cacophony.

Still, in terms of community building, the show was a success, with hundreds of people attending the opening. The oral history project is a great thing to come out of this, too. And, according to Thomas, this is the first time anyone has even attempted a survey show of LGBTQ+ artists in Taos, so he deserves praise for doing what’s never been done. Perhaps “Out Taos” can become an annual event. The unfulfilled potential of this well-intentioned but muddled first attempt certainly merits another go-round.

LGBTQ+ art show 'Out Taos' a mixed bag