Visit the Manscaping online viewing room here

Adam de Boer, Amelia Briggs, Amy Lincoln, Ant Hamlyn, Anthony Miler, Audrey Large, Botond Keresztesi, Brandon Lipchik, Brendan Lynch, Brittney Leeanne Williams, Bryant Girsch, Cara Nahaul, Caroline Larsen, Cecila Fiona Strandbygaard, Chelsea Seltzer, Dan Attoe, Daniel Andres Alcazar, Darryl Westly, Ed Ruscha, Ena Swansea, Eric Yahnker, Gabrielle Garland, Gao Hang, Grant Stoops, Henry Hudson, Hiroya Kurata, Ivan Seal, James Ulmer, Jean Nagai, Jeremy Shockley, J.J. Manford, Jochen Mühlenbrink, Jon Young, Karl Maughan, Kate Klingbeil, Kim Dorland, Krzysztof Grzybacz, Leo Park, Leslie Weissman, Lisa Vlaemminck, Magda Kirk, Martina Grlic, Mathew Tom, Mathew Zefeldt, Matt Belk, Matt Murphy, Matthew F. Fisher, Matthew Hansel, Micah Ofstedahl, Natalie Birinyi, Natalie Westbrook, Nevena Prijic, Paul Corio, Philip Hinge, Rick Leong, Rosson Crow, Shara Hughes, Sholto Blissett, Taylor McKimens, Theo A. Rosenblum, Tim Gardner, Tim Irani

New York, NY — The Hole is proud to present Manscaping, our yearly thematic group extravaganza now across two galleries, Bowery and Los Angeles. With over sixty artists on both coasts and a forthcoming catalogue, Manscaping looks at depictions of landscape today with a whiff of gender nonsense.

As a genre, landscape has been central to art since pre-history as humankind intrinsically seeks to record the world around it. Whether accurate or idealized, landscape reveals as much about the recorder as the recorded; just as in past centuries cartography showed how past peoples viewed the world as they tried to make sense of it, today the new frontiers to chart are intangible: video mapping instead of cartography, deep space instead of deep oceans, but the drive to give image to the world around us persists.

Landscape today may not be the most snazzy genre; right now all the fireworks are still in figuration—and, as with our thematic group exhibition last year, Nature Morte, even still life is popping off. Landscape is the slow burn, where our contemporary world is reflected but with less flash. I have to be in the right headspace myself, and it is nice that these two exhibitions provide a figuration-free environment in which we can adjust our eyes to the solitude.

Manscaping we interpret as nature impacted by mankind, not male grooming habits of course; how the idea of raw and rugged untouched nature is an anachronism. Instead of nature “red in tooth and claw” we have symmetrical and still nature, smoothed out and shaved; fantastical or virtual, but not the sloppy Romantic style traced from Turner though Plein Air.

What I have been seeing in emerging landscape is a magical realism, a topiary-like control, and a digital framework. Magical realism has landscapes coming alive with activity and spirit, as in the detailed swirling works of Cecilia Fiona Strandbygaard or Kate Klingbeil. The tight control of the natural world comes across in the discrete and symmetrical shapings of Matthew Fisher or Tim Irani. And the digital tools impacting our way of giving image to nature range from literal with Mathew Zefeldt and Gao Hang to more subtle with Lisa Vlaemminck and Ena Swansea.

Manscaping I liked because when studying landscape, gender trouble always made me wanna barf; anything earth mother, any rolling boob and butt hills, any enviro-gendering of our “assaulted” female earth. In this show we include female body as landscape but also male body as landscape and also no-body as landscape, as well as some humorous gender cliché—upending and some actual hairy man-scapes from Magda Kirk or Bryant Girsch. It’s like figuration can’t quite be kept at bay; even the landscape has to be somebody!

I thought the plastic “live walls” were very poignant as I picture the consumers of these products to be well-intentioned interior designers of sad offices with no natural light. And seeing some green on your retina is undeniably uplifting—in fact scientifically! Having a profound transcendental experience with the natural world may not be as much of a thing today as it was in the Romantic era. Instead of “Monk By the Sea” we have Zefeldt’s character in Grand Theft Auto looking out onto the beautiful programmed hills of the video game. As the wild, natural world is destroyed perhaps the future of landscape as a genre is the digital sublime.

Our entire staff here contributed to the curation of this project, which makes it extra gratifying: Julien Pomerleau, Elena Platonova, Sorat May Andersen, Jessica Gallucci and Raymond Bulman.

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