Rapture: A Queer Taste for Color, Texture and Decorative Pattern

About the Participants:

Peter Hristoff was born 1958 in Istanbul. He immigrated to New York with his family in 1963. He graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York in 1981, and completed his master’s degree at Hunter College, City University of New York in 1983. In the mid-1980s, he started dividing his time between Turkey and the US. Hristoff describes his work as exploring themes of joy, sorrow, hope, despair, belief and desire. He is the recipient of the Joan Mitchell Award in Painting, the New York Foundation for the Arts Award in Drawing, and the Moon and Stars Project Grant. Currently, Hristoff is a Professor of painting and drawing at the School of Visual Arts in New York.

Though primarily a painter, Adrian Milton has never limited himself to any particular medium. He has written several books, including The Bevledere, a history of Fire Island’s famous inn. As a director and producer, he made the feature-length documentary film Portrait of a Part-Time Lady about Minette, a notable 1950s drag queen. He has created collages from collected construction-site posters, and made murals from them for apartment-building lobbies. Most recently Milton has focused on refining his neo-geometric abstract paintings, which embody influences from tantric art and the configuration and repetitions of patterns from a wide range of cultures.

Sean O'Connor lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has exhibited solo shows at The Leslie Lohman Museum and Queer and Lesbian Art in New York, Naughton Gallery Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, and Room 68 in Provincetown, Massachusetts. He has also participated in numerous group shows domestically and internationally such as Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York and Palais De Tokyo in Paris, France. Permanent collections include the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art and Naughton Gallery Queen's University Belfast.

Andrew Cornell Robinson explores relationships between material and memory through his multidisciplinary approach to art, craft and design. He has been awarded residencies and fellowships including the Edward Albee Foundation, the Guttenberg Arts Residency, India’s Agastya Foundation, Donna Karan’s artisan project in Port au Prince, Haiti. His work has been presented nationally and internationally at the United Kingdom’s Crafts Council, the Ross Art Museum, the Bruce Museum’s Ceramics Circle, and exhibitions from New York to Miami. He has taught and lectured at Columbia University, Brooklyn College, Pratt, School of Visual Arts, Greenwich House Pottery, the American Center for Design in Chicago, and he is a member of the faculty at Parsons School of Design. He lives and works in New York City.

Wade Schaming was born in 1984 in Pittsburgh, PA. His sculptures are painstakingly assembled solely through processes of stacking. The materials remain unchanged – used as is/found – and are unfixed to each other: as such, he creates delicate juxtapositions perilously balanced, like thought given concrete form. From discarded and forgotten objects, which memorialize hope, the assembled forms aspire to return dignity to the bearer and evoke empathy in the viewer. This process is site-specific and confined to the present moment: because he works only with found and discarded materials (nothing used is purchased), his pieces reflect their origins while reinforcing a desire to create impermanence.

Chris Tanner is a gay artist and performer. He is best known for his assemblages made from glitter, paillettes, jewels, sterling silver leaf and found objects. Tanner was born in Duarte, California and studied art at the San Francisco Academy of Art and the California Institute for the arts. He is an accomplished performer and playwright in addition to his work as an artist. He has been exhibited in numerous solo exhibitions including; Howl! Happening Gallery, La MaMa La Galleria, Pavel Zoubok Gallery, Bridgewater/ Lustberg Gallery and The Kitchen in New York, NY. Atrium Gallery in St. Louis, MO, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art in Boulder, CO, Flatland Gallery in Utrecht, Holland and Gallery Oz in Paris, France.

Harrison Tenzer (b. 1989, Los Angeles) is a Brooklyn-based queer artist. Tenzer intuitively began drawing as a child, initially inspired by Egyptian hieroglyphics. He honed his craft with extensive studio art courses at Crossroads Middle and High School and continued creating art while studying American History and Art History at University of Pennsylvania. Harrison has worked in the commercial art world and as a curator in New York for a decade. His work was most recently featured in the virtual exhibition at Hook Art Interviews on, for and about the queer body, curated by Eric Shiner, Executive Director of Pioneer Works.