Jimmy DeSana & Paul Mpagi Sepuya Exhibition Walkthrough at DOCUMENT at DOCUMENT

We're heading to West Town for a walkthrough of Jimmy DeSana and Paul Mpagi Sepuya's two-person exhibition of photography at DOCUMENT!

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The intergenerational dialogue between the work of Jimmy DeSana and Paul Mpagi Sepuya unfolds as a set of carefully matched pairings. Both artists use photography to engage with queer bodies and the politics of representation, implicating the viewer as much as any figure who appears in the frame.

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Guests are invited to explore the exhibition while hearing from the curatorial team and gaining deeper insight into the practices of DeSana and Sepuya. Whether you’re already familiar with the artists, drawn to photography, or simply eager to expand your horizons, you’re sure to leave DOCUMENT feeling inspired.

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ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Closely associated with New York City's No Wave and downtown art scenes in the late 1970s and employing a rich array of photographic processes, Jimmy DeSana drew on Surrealism in presenting bodies in confusing entanglement with everyday objects as well as one another. Anticipating the sexual anxieties of the imminent AIDS crisis, he infused queer erotics with equal parts absurdity and dread.

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Beginning his career in the mid-2000s, Paul Mpagi Sepuya's work comes from his intimate involvement and collaboration with queer communities on both U.S. coasts. The desiring gaze can only take in Sepuya's bodies via fragmentation, mirroring or the clever reproduction of his previous photographs; effects meticulously produced by Sepuya in the studio rather than by any digital manipulation.

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Side by side, DeSana and Sepuya remind us that queer aesthetics—much like queer liberation—is a continual process, never far from the lived, corporeal world.

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