Tag Archives: The Ballad of Sexual Dependency (Goldin)

LINDA SIMPSON AND REYNALDO RIVERA

Across his body of work, Reynaldo Rivera depicts people enmeshed in their own private worlds who completely transcend their surroundings through the force of imagination and their inner lives. This remains true, whether the subject is photographed in a garden, a public toilet, or a house party in pre-gentrified Echo Park. I think this is a primary difference between Rivera’s work and Nan Goldin’s, to whom his portraits of drag queens, trans women, and other friends might be compared. Goldin’s subjects in The Ballad of Sexual Dependency are downwardly mobile: middle class kids who took a wrong turn, captured in louche dens of bohemian squalor during emotionally intimate scenes… Rivera’s photographs of drag performers taken in Latino gay bars in LA between 1989 and 1997 reflect a different kind of collaboration. He sees his subjects less as they “are” than how they most wish to be seen, lending himself to their dreams and illusions of glamour. And why shouldn’t these dreams be realized?Chris Kraus*

This week, Linda Simpson and Reynaldo Rivera will present their new books—The Drag Explosion and Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City—and join artist and editor Alex Jovanovich in conversation.

See link below to register for the online event.

AN EVENING WITH REYNALDO RIVERA and LINDA SIMPSON

Artforum / Bookforum

Tuesday, December 15.

4 pm on the West Coast; 7 pm East Coast.

*Chris Kraus, from her introduction to Reynaldo Rivera: Provisional Notes for a Disappeared City (South Pasadena, CA: Semiotext(e), 2020).

Linda Simpson (images in color, from top): RuPaul, 1992; group of drag performers, including Lady Bunny (far left); Dean Johnson, 1987; RuPaul; event card image courtesy and © Artforum and Bookforum. Images © Linda Simpson, courtesy of the artist.

Reynaldo Rivera (images in black and white, from above): Echo Park (self-portrait), 1996; Vaginal Davis, Downtown, 1993; Cindy Gomez, Echo Park, 1992; Elyse Regehr and Javier Orosco, Downtown LA, 1989). Images © Reynaldo Rivera, courtesy of the artist

GOLDIN’S BALLAD AT MOCA

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A digital presentation of Nan Goldin’s original 35mm slide installation THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY is on view at MOCA as part of the exhibition REAL WORLDS—BRASSAÏ, ARBUS, GOLDIN.

“Nan’s Bowery loft had no windows or else they were covered and this made her parties long, hilarious, dangerous events. You had no idea what time it was or how light the sky was getting out there. Her guests departed when they could ingest no more and some didn’t leave even then…

“I remember the first telephone conversation I ever had with Nan. ‘I’m among the missing today,’ she said, and hung up.” — Darryl Pinckney, from his essay in Goldin’s exhibition catalogue I’ll Be Your Mirror*

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NAN GOLDIN—THE BALLAD OF SEXUAL DEPENDENCY

REAL WORLDS—BRASSAÏ, ARBUS, GOLDIN, through September 3.

MOCA GRAND AVENUE, 250 South Grand Avenue, downtown Los Angeles.

moca.org/real-worlds-brassai-arbus-goldin

*See Hilton Als’ 2016 piece: newyorker.com/the-ballad-of-sexual-dependency

Nan GoldinThe Ballad of Sexual Dependency, from top:

John Waters and Cookie Mueller in Provincetown; Edwige Belmore in Edwige Behind the Bar at Evelyn’s New York City, 1985; Bruce Balboni and Philippe Marcade on the beach, Truro, MA, 1975.

Image credit: Nan Goldin and Matthew Marks Gallery.

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