Whoever you are
Curated by Gavin Morrison

Thomas Feulmer, Fraser Stables, Catherine Street


October 23 – November 28, 2010

Authenticity is prized. Our authentic self, the true you, is that which appears without pretense, play acting, performative exuberance, or histrionics. But artifice is essential: “as though... theater, deceit, infidelity, hypocrisy, infelicity, prarasitism, and the simulation of real life were not part of real life!” Rather we play ourselves; we construct a notion of how we wish to be perceived by varied conscious and inadvertent theatricalities. Through culturing, documenting and manipulating the three artists fracture and elevate aspects of this existential subplot. Truth and fiction are peripheral to the more involved and elaborate dance of performance, belief and projection. 

Thomas Feulmer uses the text from gay personal ads that is then stenciled paintings on paper. The text remain anonymous but characterize both the desired partner but also the author. The texts utilize a lexicon related to specific sub-groups yet often through negation: “NO FATS, FEMS, PNPER'S, TWEAKERS, DADDIES...” Fraser Stables has, for a  number of years, been documenting the stories and environment of Scott Martinez. Scott's stories are lyrical descriptions of  fanciful events from his youth. The videos present these vignettes but also show Scott's current environment, his home in suburban Houston which points to a more commonplace existence. The veracity of the stories he recounts is neither challenged nor proven, yet material evidence is often eluded but not provided. Catherine Street practice melds live performance with drawing and writing. In her performance at the opening at Number 35, Street will use her body in adapting and mutating commonplace actions, disjunction is created from these by the ambiguous texts she recites which point to a parallel narrative. Accompanying this will be drawings which hold in tension the prosaic aspects of language with more mutable forms.