Bodily Here: Patrick Angus, Michael Hosser, James Huber and Blake Little

Edward Cella Art & Architecture proudly presents a pop-up exhibition of works made over a forty-year timeframe by four significant gay artists who exploring the physical and emotional state of the male body at the Tom of Finland Foundation Art & Culture Festival. Entitled Bodily Here, the exhibition is composed of work by Patrick Angus (1953-1992), Michael Hossner (1954-1990), James Huber (1950-1988), and Blake Little (b. 1953). Encompassing photography, painting, drawing and printmaking, the project brings together the work of four artists of the same generation; however, three of them will make work in the years before they die of the AIDS pandemic and the other who goes on to create a new body of work created during the latest world-wide pandemic.

Presented at the Second Home in Hollywood, the Festival will be open to the public December 4 & 5, 2021 and the exhibition will continue online on Artsy though December 31st.

The gallery presents the debut of a new body of work entitled Protection by photographer Blake Little. Although widely known for his award-wining photography for the entertainment industry, Blake Little has been creating distinctive series of in-depth portraiture of individuals in various GLBTQ communities for decades. Little explores and documents these subcultures by personally navigating networks of the people photographs. His work reveals the unique characteristics of each sitter but also the shared common identities which draw these folks together.

Starting in 2019, Protection was inspired by the photograph’s visual curiosity in rubber and latex clothing and how it covers and accentuates the body. Seeking out both male and females drawn to the material and the sexual freedom it creates, Little produced a series of photographic sessions in his Los Angeles studio shooting booth individuals and couples, encouraging them to express their particular fascinations and playful relationships in the front of his camera.

With hopes of creating images that reveal the visual and emotional aspects of this seductive second skin, Little became fascinated with the idea that while the outfits often conceals the body creating anonymity, the rubber enthusiasts are actually pursuing deeper human connections. The common fetishes and fascinations with the material bring these people together.

In the midst of making the series, the world-wide pandemic organically created new layers of meaning and context for the project. In the Little’s words, "How do we navigate intimacy in this new reality when human contact can threaten your life?"

Suggesting an expanded context for Little’s series, the gallery will also present works by three artists who died during the AIDS pandemic.

The paintings and drawings of Patrick Angus have become widely recognized for his strikingly intimate portraits of men and honest depictions of the gay experience in 1980s New York. The gallery offers a newly discovered and impressive watercolor, a color pencil drawing, and an uncommon black and white lithograph all created by the artist shortly after his relocation to Los Angeles from Santa Barbara. These three portraits exemplify the artist’s unique form of expressive social realism directly inspired by the community of gay and straight men he knew personally and captured in domestic interiors lounging, sitting, and posing. Captured in artist’s hallmark fluid yet sharply observant style, the works are inscribed to a close friend (who is featured as the subject of two of the works) and mark the close relationships that inspire much of the artist’s formative work exploring the intricacies of the male portrait.

Like Angus, James Huber and Michael Hosser emerge as artists in the mid-1970s set out to live in urban center and orient their work to depicting the people, places, and themes that they experienced as gay men. Presented for the first time since their deaths, the artworks by Huber and Hosser were created in during the phosphorescence of gay culture in San Francisco in the post Stonewall period and through the early years of AIDS pandemic.

The initial selection of small format color crayon and pencil drawings by James Huber depict male figures in moments of rest in interior settings or in motion in the landscape set often against the horizon. Frequently nude, his subjects convey a Queer domesticity with their ease of pose framed consciously by the composition created by the artist. Standing in contrast to these, are more explicit drawings of crouching male forms that suggest a powerful sexual self-expression. Incorporating crayon, graphite, color pencil, marker and collage, one senses the artist’s sense of urgency to put down the image yet, ultimately, Huber generates an allegorical like quietude on that suffuses much of oeuvre. 

In contrast, Michael Hossner’s small format drawings and paintings scream and howl with energy. His male figures crouch or stand in tension charaterized with flashes of hot colors, torqued diagonality of stance, and short energetic marks in crayon or oil. They sometimes stare defiantly at the viewer. Maturing quickly as artist in the final years of his life, Hosser’s personal urgency to use art to overcome and transcend infuse his figurative and landscape paintings and works on paper with a powerful autobiographical narrative. Emotionally resonate and direct, Hossner’s works speaks of, in his own words, “the voluptuousness of pain the human condition.”

ABOUT BLAKE LITTLE

Born and raised in Seattle, WA in 1956, Little studied at the University of Washington and Seattle Central College where he completed his photography degree in 1984. Distinguished by intimate and honest portraits, Little has decades of commercial assignments in the entertainment industry and a short list of his celebrity portraits include Tom Cruise, Julianne Moore, Steve Carell, Samuel Jackson, Gwyneth Paltrow, Colin Powell, 50 Cent, Glenn Close, Jane Fonda, Adrien Brody and many others. His corporate clients including Sony Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, and Twentieth Century Fox among others. Little’s portraiture has been featured in The London Times Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, Entertainment Weekly, The Advocate, People Magazine, Time, Los Angeles Magazine.

In January 2020, Little’s most current project Fluid, which documents members of the transgender, non-binary and gender fluid community opened at the University of Victoria Legacy Gallery and will travel in Canada and the US in the coming years. Little’s project, Photographs from the Gay Rodeo debuted with a solo exhibition at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis (2014) and subsequently traveled to museums including The James Museum, St Petersburg, FL (2020); Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK (2019); San Diego State University, San Diego, CA (2016); University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson (2015) and eight others. Little’s solo exhibitions include ARCHETYPE: Portraits by Blake Little, Stonewall Museum, Wilton Manors, FL (2016); Preservation, Kopeikin Gallery, Los Angeles, CA (2015); The Company of Men, Western Project, Los Angeles, CA (2011) and others. Selections of his work have been featured in in group exhibitions including Magnetic West, Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA (2020); Concealed: Portraits of LGBT Gun Owners, International Pride Awards, Sau Paulo, Brazil (2020) and International Pride Awards, Amsterdam, Holland (2019) and others. His work has been published in seven monographs: Primary (2021); Work (2017); Photographs from the Gay Rodeo (2016); Preservation (2015); Manifest (2013); The Company of Men (2011); and Dichotomy (1997). Fluid was published in the art journal Public 62: The Gender Diverse Lens Lyzanne, Saskatoon, SK and was selected a winner in American Photos Best Photos of 2020 AP37 annual. Little’s series Concealed: Portraits of LGBT Gun Owners was selected winner in American Photo AP34 and received the 2021 Lens Culture Critic Choice Award.

ABOUT PATRICK ANGUS

Patrick Angus (1953-1992) was born in North Hollywood, California and died in New York City. Past exhibitions include Body. Gaze. Power. - A Cultural History of the Bath, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany, in 2020; Patrick Angus: Voyeur, Long Beach Museum of Art, California, in 2019; On Our Backs: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work, Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY in 2019; Patrick Angus. Landscapes and Portraits, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany, in 2019; Patrick Angus. Private Show, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany, in 2017; Fort Smith Regional Art Museum, Arkansas, in 2015; First Sight, Loom Gallery, Milan, Italy, in 2015; and Patrick Angus, Galerie Thomas Fuchs, Stuttgart, Germany, in 2015, and Looking, Edward Cella Art+Architecture, Los Angeles in 2015. A monograph on Patrick Angus was published by Hatje Cantz in 2016 and a publication on the exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart by Distanz Verlag in 2017. Angus is represented in the collections of the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, New York, NY, the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart, Germany, and the Schwules Museum, Berlin, Germany.

ABOUT MICHAEL HOSSNER

Michael Hossner was born in Ogden, Utah in 1954 and studied art the U. of Utah in Salt Lake City. He moved to San Francisco in 1975, continued his studies at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland and with painter James Huber whom he was in a relationship with. Working seasonally as gardner, Hosser paints intentionally from the mid-1980s onward and creates a notable body of powerful figurative paintings and landscapes. Exhibiting only in the final few years before his death of AIDS in 1990, Hosser had solo exhibitions at the Fobbo Gallery, San Francisco in 1989, another in collaboration with Think Tank Gallery in 1988, and at Footwork Studio Gallery in 1986. Underscoring the challenges facing young Queer artists whose work was set in opposition to more conventional artistic practices, Hossner presented his work during several San Francisco Open Studios including 1988, 1987 and in 1986 at Five Palm Studios in Oakland. An in-depth archive of his artist output has only recently come to light having been preserved for the thirty years since his passing portions of which are included in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC. A monograph of his work is in preparation. 

ABOUT JAMES HUBER

James Huber was born in Santa Cruz, CA in 1950 and began his studies at UC Santa Cruz and earned his B.A. in History and Studio Art at the UC Berkeley in 1972 and briefly continued his studies afterwards at the Academy of Art, San Francisco under Joan Brown. After a brief trip in New York, Huber returns to San Francisco in 1974 and establishes the South of Market, Open Studios Program along with Phil Linhares and David McClay as an alternative means for artist to exhibit and present their practices outside commercial contexts. He presents his work in 1974 and 1975 and in later years. Consistently maintaining an active studio and independent art making practice in San Francisco, he receives a solo exhibition of his work at the Plaza Gallery, Bank of America Headquarters, San Francisco in 1977 and a survey of his work at the South of Market Cultural Center, San Francisco in 1980. His work is included in group exhibition at the Vorpal Gallery, San Francisco in 1986, the Pritchard Art Gallery, U. of Idaho, Moscow, ID in 1987 and at the Collins Gallery, Emeryville, CA in 1987. He is diagnosed with AIDS in 1988 and dies shortly afterwards at age thirty-eight. An in-depth archive of his artist output has only recently come to light having been preserved for the thirty years since his passing portions of which are included in the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian, Washington, DC. A monograph of his work is in preparation.

ABOUT THE TOM OF FINLAND FOUNDATION ART & CULTURE FESTIVAL

The Tom of Finland Foundation hosts the Tom of Finland Art & Culture Festival to highlight the Queer erotic art community. The Festival provides a space for artists and dealers to exhibit their works and offers the public a unique opportunity to view and purchase erotic art from all over the world. Throughout the course of the weekend, the Festival hosts artists, vendors, galleries, performers, talks, panels, screenings, and awards. Tom of Finland Foundation uses funds generated from donations, memberships and fundraising efforts to support its mission to protect, preserve, and promote the erotic arts and artists.