Jared Buckhiester, Potential Subject at 68MPH 1-85 SC State Line, 2021, archival inkjet print, image courtesy of the artist. [Image description: the driver’s side window of a yellow truck viewed from below, looking up. The bottom half of a man’s face, his chin, beard, lips, top row of teeth, are visible on the right side of the image, looking out from inside the cab of the truck. A reflection of the sky and green trees can be seen on the left quadrant of the image.]

Join us for the opening of BOY BOX, curated by Angela Conant, wIth work by: Jared Buckhiester, CAConrad, Deborah Czeresko, Karen Hall, BB Kenda, Rose Nestler, Sarada Rauch, Marion Scemama and David Wojnarowicz, Vincent Tiley, Christopher Udemezue, Angela Washko.

4-8 pm - Opening

5 pm - Curatorial Walkthrough

7 pm - Drag castrato performance by Daren

RSVP and Masks Required.

For the purposes of this exhibition, masculinity is defined as a constructed and perceived set of traits as evaluated by a cis-dominated, colonized Western culture, in which masculinity is imposed from external perspectives, and translated into individual performances across the gender spectrum. BOY BOX optimistically proposes broader access to the joys and benefits of fluid, detachable masculine traits. The exhibition is not an astigmatic celebration of maleness, but rather a deconstruction of masculinity’s history of power, and a rejection of its stigma, one that has fueled racism and the marginalization of people who do not conform to binary constructions of gender. Addressing the hypocrisy of a masculine archetype that, in Western culture, is reserved for white cis-male people, this exhibition aims to complicate and bend masculinity across intersections of identity. To those ends, BOY BOX aims to carefully bring the fragility and preciousness of masculinity down to earth, catching it as it falls from its cultural pedestal. On view are artworks that address masculinity’s myriad iterations, frustrating ideas of  gender, the male sex, and toxicity.

The United States’ surge of mass killings in recent years evinces the damage wrought by the Western tradition of violence as a masculine craft. Where research into the causes of mass violence is inadequate, an observable commonality is that most perpetrators are male-identifying. Meanwhile, modern sensibilities replace and flip archaic gender roles. Heterosexual romance, for example, is the old-fashioned process of quieting hyper-masculine impulse in order to sweeten and garner interest from a prospective sexual partner. This cloak to accessorize the performance of masculinity is a forefather of what we now call consent.

Working to move outside its conventional constraints, this exhibition offers a group of artists’ observations and performances of masculinity. Their work shows that we each have not only a unique relationship with the masculine, but a right to its power, swagger and strength.