The Henry has two untitled images from David Wojnarowicz’s 1989 “Sex Series” in its collection.
Of this series, Henry Gallery curators write: “[Wojnarowicz’s] photographic Sex Series…was inspired when a work of his depicting homosexual activity was rejected from a Paris exhibit. The eight photomontages which comprise the series are printed as negatives and consist of a principle image framed or punctuated by small circular insets, which Wojnarowicz likens to surveillance photos. Each inset is a portal into another reality, one other than the main image of the photograph. Reversing the inset images gives them a sinister, darker aura, emphasized by the combination and juxtaposition of the known and the unknown.
“In the Sex Studies series, [David] collages found and altered examples of gay pornography and iconic images from gay male subculture onto appropriated American icons … in order to remind viewers that the story of a flourishing homosexual subculture in the United States is one of this country’s hidden histories.”
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