Auxier Kline is pleased to present ANIMAL, a three-person exhibition featuring New York based artists Paul Booth, Scott Csoke, and Jeff Grant.  

The genesis of Art History began at least 450,000 years ago when the oldest known painting of a life-sized warty pig was painted on a cave wall in Indonesia, thus beginning the long standing tradition of artists depicting animals. While the meaning of these cave paintings remain unknown, over the course of history, artists began using anthropomorphism to illustrate human characteristics, morals, and emotions in their depictions of animals.

ANIMAL brings together a menagerie of beasts created by three contemporary artists who infuse their depictions of animals with a queer sensibility.  The aesthetic of High Camp is steeped in the artworks included in the exhibition, expressing irony and subversion of mainstream society, while reflecting the queer culture back on itself in the forms of both critique and celebration.  

Paul Booth’s contribution to the exhibition consists of three paintings of chickens compressed into a tight and unforgiving picture plane while tragedies occur.  These foul bleed out theatrically after slaughter, are plucked of their feathers and left humiliatingly exposed,  engage in duels with one another; all the while maintaining a sense of humor for the viewer. 

Scott Csoke’s paintings of dogs harken back to traditional hunting paintings.  Their addition of rainbows and titling of the works subvert that tradition and make the paintings unequivocally queer. Titles like Gay Puppy Throwing Up Homosexuality and Gay Puppy Chasing Their First Gay Experience transform  the drama and struggle of the hunt into dramas of sexual identity and queer culture. 

Jeff Grant’s Effort Objects series of color pencil drawings in colorful frames depict forms that ungulate between animals, toys, and tools.  Grant uses materials commonly accessible to children to investigate the values of childhood play versus adult maturity. His sculpture titled Withershins (a term meaning counterclockwise and contrary to natural direction), consists of a circle of plastic toy animals thoughtfully placed on the ground and engulfed in a suspended industrial light fixture that casts silhouettes of the artist’s composition.  The piece touches on both historical references and creationism, while maintaining a childlike quality of intense play.