STATEMENT OF WORK

Spanning over four decades, my critical engagement with fine art practice has been anchored in deep exploration of the aesthetic and political power of using words as images. This step and repeat rigor with language and material often manifests as a critical and self-aware commentary, yo-yoing between logic, absurdity, glamour, provocation, and seduction. My artist practice has been k nown to solicit contractual perspectives from Radical Feminism, i.e., advocating for a societal reordering that abolishes male and white supremacy; and Homocore, which rejects liberal assimilationist politics in favor of a radically unapologetic gay[queer] outward models. Rather than aligning with mainstream “identity politics,” my work is rooted in a deeper, avant-garde, gay [queer] underground, where the legibility of an artwork is secondary to a pervasive sense of transgression and anti-authoritarianism. Equal parts toxic and seductive, use of language and imagery is marked by acid humor and antagonistic wit in a vehement critique of the intersections of sex, gender, the sexuality of typography, whiteness, politics and cultural representation as acts of insurgency.

Openly gay and being an artist, I was shaped by the politically charged atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s—a time defined by racial and gender politics, AIDS activism, and institutional distrust; I, like many of my contemporaries, directly engaged with these themes. Art became a tool for critique, resistance, and reimagining societal normalities. By appropriating materials and imagery from art history and popular culture, my work reflects both historical and current narratives within gay and queer adjacent communities and within the walls of the western cultural arena.

From the U.S. government’s initial neglect of the AIDS crisis and the subsequent surge of carpet-bombing activism, to the eventual legal recognition of gay marriage, this arc traces a journey from the stigmatization of homosexuality to mainstream acceptance. Yet, this assimilation has created a complex reality where the revolutionary spirit of past gay activism often feels snuffed and extinguished. The shift from being gay[societal] outlaws to being integrated within legal and cultural normality[yawn] has transformed gay and queer landscapes, sometimes at the expense of their radical edge. As vocal, critical activism has given way to the “hetero-banality of political correctness,” reactionary discourse has emerged. The evolution from radical activism to the commodification of gay[queer] identities feels like a betrayal of the gay movement’s revolutionary roots, where once radical conversations have been prolapsed into marketable and overly sanitized prissy discussions. I call this “the new bore”—the price of mainstreaming. Has legal recognition contributed to the withering of the gay outlaw?

Grounded in recontextualization and critique, my work considers tensions between past and present radical movements, demanding us to recognize how gay [queer] visual combatants remain a fierce cultural authority of resistance in a society that often seeks to sanitize and commodify the subversive. Today’s critique has prolapsed into basic discussions as the culture has devolved into a swirl of opinions on social media’s lazy Susan of digital contagions. I am specifically speaking on how the culture today has become increasingly diluted, evolving into a culture with a new cast of “characters of the oppressor and oppressed” namely alliteration phrases like: Almost Actual, Pejorative Personal, Closeted Critical, Subversive Sensitive, Figurative Fated, Allegorical Allergic, and Societal Sick, all of which are plagued by the pestilence of the digital age and common denominator of basic.

https://markverabioff.com/