Queer Abstraction

Excerpts from the press release

Queer Abstraction
June 1 – September 8, 2019
Des Moines Art Center, Des Moines, Iowa, USA – Anna K. Meredith Gallery and I. M. Pei Building
Curated by Jared Ledesma.

‘Queer artists have embraced abstraction to communicate their unauthorized desires and identities through an accepted mode of art… Currently, abstract art that embodies this mode of expression has gained the moniker “Queer Abstraction,” and has become a growing aesthetic force during the present, unsettling era.’

Queer Abstraction will be the first exhibition in the Des Moines Art Center’s 70-year history to focus exclusively on queer subject matter. It marks a substantial shift in the Art Center’s programming by purposely including queer voices that have been left out of art history. Assistant Curator Jared Ledesma is organizing the exhibition.

The exhibition will be traveling to the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas. And it is acompanied by a catalogue. Artists include: Math Bass, Mark Bradford, Edie Fake, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Harmony Hammond, Nicholas Hlobo, John Paul Morabito, Carrie Moyer, Sheila Pepe, Prem Sahib, Jonathan VanDyke, and Jade Yumang. The project also includes the commissioning of works by Elijah Burgher and Mark Joshua Epstein, and a new edition of artist Tom Burr’s large-scale sculpture Deep Purple.