Nayland Blake presents a three-part exhibition at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York, featuring the retrospective "Sex in the 90s" curated by Beau Rutland and a new installation titled "Session." The show spans two gallery spaces on West 22nd Street, displaying a diverse array of works including plexiglass boxes of mass-market paperbacks, graphite drawings, a yellow stuffed bunny with Kaposi sarcoma lesions, and sculptures referencing kink and fetish culture. The new work "Session" uses artisanal implements of pleasure and pain clipped to black chains, evoking personal narrative and autobiography.
The exhibition matters because it centers queerness as an aesthetic method, challenging conventional notions of stylistic unity in art. Blake's work resists easy categorization, operating as a polyphonic stage where disparate objects and references collide. By restoring "lifestyle" to the center of artistic inquiry, the show engages with the realities of queer and trans experience, offering a radical counterpoint to prevailing figurative painting trends. The review also connects Blake's approach to historical figures like Francis Bacon, emphasizing the power of autobiographical grotesquery in art.