Provincetown, MA MODERN MAN The male figure
Beginning July 5 at Bowersock Gallery in Provincetown, Massachusetts, is Modern Man, a new juried group exhibition that will examine the male figure within a modern context.
“While reviewing our 15th anniversary season, we were surprised to realize we hadn’t done this yet,” says gallery owner and curator Steve Bowersock. “We also
realized, but for the exception of erotica, there are fewer works of art representing males, not only in our own gallery, but in many we’d visited.”
Artists in the juried exhibition include Jayne Adams, who has had a relationship with Bowersock Gallery for several years. “My subjects are local and often people I know. Everything is firsthand. One has to know his subject. It cannot be faked. It is the study of body types, body language and engaging with the action directly that allows for expressive delivery of the form,” Adams says. “Being that direct observer of folks working, doing, task mastering of all types is fascinating. As well, this fits into a broader topic for me for understanding continuums.”
Adams works from sketches and life models, as well as photos for referencing anatomical information when the subject is in motion. “Hand Over Hand is my curiosity for repetitive motions during a task,” Adams adds. “The challenge is to try and capture that sense of movement. I felt this piece was successful in capturing the repetition by focusing on the hands, as well as coming together with a gestural, painterly outcome.”
Sculptor Debbie Korbel will be showing her mixed media piece Joy, which shows a nude man perched precariously, and also quite gracefully, in a ballerina’s pose on top of a rusted piece of machinery. “I wanted to express beauty in something we have been told isn’t beautiful. It’s so easy to feel bad about ourselves. I know when I see someone who isn’t what we have been taught is ‘perfect’ still feeling comfortable in their own skin, it reminds me to take it easy on myself,” Korbel says. “It helps me to feel good about myself, as I am at this moment. I wanted Joy to give others that feeling of self-acceptance. The subject is
not your traditional ballet dancer, but he has grace, beauty and takes joy in what he is doing. I had him go commando because it struck me funny and I am 12 [years old].”
Rikki Neihaus will be showing the work Green and Pleasant Land, which shows a single male subject seated and dressed in a suit. “This image was made in the largest IKEA in the United States. It’s become a public space; people already spend a lot of time in retail spaces, but IKEA transcends that. We can eat there. Children play there,” Neihaus says. “There is a sense of comfort in all the orderly objects, so compact and beautifully put together. There is a sense of potential in each little ‘room,’ this could be our home, in some place other than where we are now. Yet, there is an unhappy transition when we leave the designed area of the store and go downstairs to the warehouse, where we must start to confront the realities, the weight of the product we must carry to our home, its new imperfect environment, the packaging we must dispose of. The sense of disappointment. I wanted to convey a general lack of satisfaction, isolation and aimlessness.”
On the title of the exhibition, Modern Man, Neihaus says, “I think of the title as a question to explore; I really don’t have a concrete idea who the modern man is. I think he is a work in progress finding his way. He has technology and enlightenment, but he navigates the modern world with the same humanity, fears and desires he’s had for centuries, and he adapts to survive. As a painter I think of Lucian Freud’s view of the sitter as a naked animal, rather than a classical nude portrait, and wonder how that relates to our virtual life.”