David Benjamin Sherry

Here we see the artist from behind, covered in vibrantly colored painted dots and holding a pose reminiscent of antique statuary. Sherry modeled this image after the cover for Hand in Glove, the 1983 album by the Smiths. As he explains:

I really kind of dug deep into this archive of music, film, and artwork and poetry that felt like it was made from this kind of closeted space. . . . I enjoyed this kind of magical push and pull of what’s real and what’s not real and how does something exist in a photograph, which is technically is recorded, you know, light on film with chemistry. And what can happen in between that to make it kind of seem surreal. Much like, I think, life up until this point for me felt, because my identity was so wrapped up and I didn’t know who I was and a lot of that had to do with my Queer identity.

–Conor Moynihan, assistant curator of prints, drawings, and photographs