This issue features an interview with literary and religious scholar Joseph R. Winters, author of Hope Draped in Black: Race, Melancholy and the Agony of Progress (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2016).
Created in conjunction with the exhibition Fuck the Patriarchy organized at Gas in Fall 2017.
Artists included: Jibz Cameron, Paul Chan and Badlands Unlimited, Gallery Y2K, Angélica Maria Millán Lozano, Roy Martinez, Seth Price, Ana Roldán, Lauren Satlowski, Cristina Victor, YERBAMALA COLLECTIVE
Exhibition description:
What does refusal look like? How does it fuel our ability to envision hope? Inspired in part by Theodor Adorno’s writings critical of the fascist tendencies found in American democracy—today especially relevant under Donald Trump’s presidency—Fuck the Patriarchy explores negation’s ability to envision (and complicate) hope and optimism for a better world and a feminist future.
Some interpretations of Adorno find an unresolved hope that wavers between possibility and impossibility, while allowing space for the uneasiness of nonidentical (that is, incoherent, difficult) experiences. In this view, hope is a radically engaged and deeply felt attunement to the present, in all of its uncertainty and dissonance. Fuck the Patriarchy is a refusal that likewise aspires to defy what it refuses and accept the unknowable. Toward this end, the works in this group exhibition both celebrate resistance and tap into the despondency of our current political climate.
ABOUT GAS
Located in a truck gallery parked around Los Angeles and online, Gas is a mobile, autonomous, experimental and networked platform for contemporary art.
Gas collaborates closely with artists to create experiences that foster community and connection while imagining alternative forms of cultural and critical production. The space’s inherently itinerant format reflects the fluidity of twenty-first century culture and art practice, while also allowing considerable independence and creative freedom in terms of concept, site, format, audience, and engagement. Gas offers an opportunity to rethink why, where and how we view art, whether the encounter happens while surfing the web or driving around Los Angeles, a city defined by its sprawl and car culture.
Each season, Gas presents one thematic exhibition that includes works in the gallery and online. All shows include a fundraiser edition and a zine publication.
