Tony Greene: Amid Voluptuous Calm
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Tony Greene, Amid Voluptuous Calm, c. 1988Mixed media (oil on photo mounted on board). 13 x 15 in. (33 x 38.1 cm). Collection of Jody Zellen, Los Angeles. -
Tony Greene, Artificial Night, 1998Mixed media (oil on photo mounted on board). 22 ½ x 29 ¾ in. (57.15 x 75.6 cm). Eileen Harris Norton Collection. -
Tony Greene, Grain of His Skin, 1987Mixed media (oil on photo mounted on board). 13 x 15 in. (33 x 38.1 cm). Collection of Nayland Blake, New York. -
Tony Greene, Untitled (U), 1989Mixed media (oil on photo mounted on board). 28 ½ x 32 ½ in. (72.39 x 82.55 cm). Courtesy of Ray Morales, from the estate of Norm MacNeil. -
Tony Greene, Untitled (JOE), 1990Mixed media (oil on photo mounted on board). 19 ½ s 22 ½ in. (49.53 x 57.15 cm). Collection of Herbert Lotz. -
Monica Majoli, Untitled (Bathtub Orgy), 1990Oil on panel. 12 x 12 in. (30.48 x 30.48 cm). Courtesy of the artist. -
Tony Greene, Exhibition catalogue for Against Nature: A Show by Homosexual Men, 1988Exhibition catalogue for Against Nature: A Show by Homosexual Men, organized by Dennis Cooper and Richard Hawkins at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Cover art by Tony Greene. -
Documentation of Chains of Bitter IllusionDocumentation of Chains of Bitter Illusion, a collaborative mural by Tony Greene (right) and Richard Hawkins (left) at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), Collection of Richard Hawkins. -
Documentation of Chains of Bitter IllusionDocumentation of Chains of Bitter Illusion, a collaborative mural by Tony Greene and Richard Hawkins at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE). Collection of Richard Hawkins. -
Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Video still of Nailed, 1989Excerpt from video documentation of performance at the Olio Theatre, Los Angeles 9 min. Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose Collection, ONE National Gay & Lesbian Archives at the USC Libraries.
About the Exhibition
Between roughly 1987 and his death in 1990, Tony Greene produced a body of lavishly intricate paintings using oil and glaze applied in thick layers that both protect and conceal a photographic image, often of a vintage male pinup. Shamelessly decadent visual objects, Greene’s paintings were a conscientious departure from the position of many peers, who responded to the ravages of the AIDS epidemic with better- known activist and conceptual strategies.
Since his death from complications of AIDS in 1990, Greene’s work has gone largely unrecognized. This year marks the first time his work has been exhibited since 1995.
Amid Voluptuous Calm seeks to excavate Greene’s oeuvre, placing it in dialogue with other queer artists in Los Angeles whose work similarly tackled issues of desire, mortality, and trauma. This concise “show-within-a-show” only hints at the numerous ways visual art, poetry, activism, performance, and S&M converged, and how notions of queerness—a term just making its way into the lexicon—informed artistic production for a community of artists.
Featuring projects by Greene, Ron Athey, Judie Bamber, Bob Flanagan and Sheree Rose, Doug Hammett, Doug Ischar, Monica Majoli, Millie Wilson, and the zine Infected Faggot Perspectives (produced by W. Wayne Karr and Cory Roberts-Auli), alongside documents and ephemera, the conceptual and aesthetic approaches presented are diverse. Sensual, devotional, honorific, and darkly humorous, the works featured in Amid Voluptuous Calm insist on unabashed queerness in the face of mortality.