Gray Wielebinski’s expansive practice explores the intersections of mythology, identity, gender, and nationhood. All The Wounds You Could Get, 2022, a detailed ink on paper work, takes a particular interest in expressions of power and myth-making. Iconography is drawn from medieval implements of shame and torture, Americana and athletics, and the hero is hard to distinguish from the monster. Here, masculinity is in dialogue with animality; punishment with submission. The artist explores the potential of desire to disrupt simple hierarchies of power.
Prominently featured are medieval shame masks – these devices of torture and humiliation, though occasionally used on men and children, were chiefly a mechanism to intimidate and control women. Shame masks were often shaped to resemble animals – a donkey signaling foolishness; a wolf, vulgarity – and anthropomorphism is a trope across Wielebinski’s practice. In collage, soft sculpture and installation, Wielebinski proposes new forms and ways of embodiment.
The athleticism of the central figure, together with the inclusion of sporting equipment, underlines another key area of exploration for the artist. Sport appeals to the artist on aesthetic grounds but also as a lens through which to explore and complicate ideas of the body, surveillance, desire, celebrity, costume and control.
Artist Portrait. Photo: Suzannah Pettigrew
Gray Wielebinski (b. 1991, Dallas, USA) lives and works in London. He received a BA from Pomona College, Claremont, 2014 before completing an MFA at Slade School of Fine Art, London, 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include: Wielebinski’s first institutional solo The Red Sun is High, the Blue Low at ICA London, 2023; Fratricide, Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023; Love and Theft, 12.26 Gallery, Los Angeles, 2023 ; Oil and Water, Hales Gallery, London, 2021. Recent group exhibitions include Goldsmiths Centre for Contemporary Art, London, Francois Ghebaly, Los Angeles; Gio Marconi Gallery, Milan; Bold Tendencies, London; and V.O Curations, London. Wielebinski’s work is in the collections of Los Angeles County Museum of Art; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Library & Archives; and the Benton Museum of Art, Claremont.
Wielebinski will be an Artist-in-Residence at the Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, in Summer 2024.
Installation shot: Oil and Water, Hales, London, 2021. Photo: Charlie Littlewood
Provenance
Donated by the artist and Hales Gallery, London, New York