Come On

Last Thursday I visited the Warehouse Gallery and viewed the "Come On" exhibit. The Come On exhibit featured work by Rachel Rampleman, Jo-Anne Balcaen, and Juliet Jacobson about "desire under the female gaze". I entered into a small gallery and could see three large drawings, a mass of balloons, a few smaller drawings, a video playing in a small dark room, and a couple of trays of food. Each of the large and smaller drawings were very similar; all were black and white sexual images of men duplicated once or twice across the paper. Each of the drawings had intricate backgrounds with images of either skulls, hearts, flowers, butterflies, grasses, snakes, and eyes. There were also pictures of dictionary definitions of different words juxtaposed together. The combinations were "blurt blush", "prince of darnkess, prince of peace, prince of wales", and "yearning year-round". The video, "Poison: My Sister Fucked Bret" was of Rachel Rampleman's sister and her tale of having sex with Bret Michaels, and challenging the stereotypes of hooking up with a rock star.

On one of the walls was a cluster of large, long, black balloons. These balloons were filled up the day the exhibit opened, and now you can see that some of them were deflating or deflated. The balloons represented emotions. Upon falling in love, one is filled with emotions such as desire and passion for their significant other. However, throughout time the emotions can decrease in intensity. The inflated balloons signify one being filled with emotions, and with time the balloons decrease in size. The ones already deflated represent the waning emotions that occur over time.

Across the other walls were the large drawings mentioned earlier. In "No Weak Heart Shall Prosper", the image is of two men intertwined in a passionate kiss, reflected across the paper. The background contained images of eyes, skulls, flowers, and butterflies. The two large eyes in the background really stuck out to me. The eyes are looking around two large circular structures, as if discretely taking a peek at the men in the picture. "I'll Be Your Mirror" is an image of a man lying back to back with a replication of him on grasses and skulls. Above where their heads meet is a simple heart. It sticks out because all of the other figures in the drawing use shadow and shading, but the heart is just a simple outline. "You said you hated your body, that its just a piece of meat, but I think you're wrong, I think you're beautiful" is an image of skulls in an X shape across the paper, with another image faintly drawn behind them. In the middle of the X is an intricate rose. In between the top, left side, and bottom spaces of the X are hearts where the faint image in the background becomes emphasized in that space. They serve as "holes" in which one can see what the faint image is of. The hearts and the images go along with the theme of desire and passion, while the skulls possibly represent the eventual death of desire. Finally, Narcissus is an image of two men lying on a skull and an eye, who are mirror images of each other. Most of the image is a mirror of the opposite side, with a few differences such as a pointy circular image and a part of another man. A snake goes through the entire drawing, weaving through an eye of the skull and around the men. The snake gains the most attention in the drawing, as it is darker than most of the other figures in the picture and how it weaves throughout it.

In each of the pictures the men stood out greatly, due to the uncommonness of how they are displayed. Sexual images of men are a rarity in our society. We live in a society that objectifies young, attractive, and sexual women in order to satisfy the appeal and desire of men. Juliet Jacobson created these images to show female desires of the sexuality of men and to serve as a counter for all the sexualized images of women in our society.