Dean Sameshima: Public Sex

She Works Flexible presents the exhibition Dean Sameshima: Public Sex. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, May 5, 8 – 10pm. On view through June  3.

Nearly twenty years ago, Dean Sameshima began photographing historically active gay cruising grounds in and around Los Angeles—hidden corners of Griffith Park, scratchy erotic drawings on the stalls of public restrooms, and exteriors of recently closed bathhouses and leather bars.

From this early series, entitled Wonderland (1996/97), Sameshima laid out the core concerns of his artistic practice: the politics of identification under regimes of corporeal rigor, and the tension between surveillance and concealment, especially in regards to sex in public.

Dean Sameshima: Public Sex gathers together emblematic works from across the artist’s career to consider his particular brand of photo-conceptualism, and its intrinsic relationship to the radical erotic possibilities that archives can offer. Dean Sameshima: Public Sex is presented by She Works Flexible as part of a curatorial residency with Glassell School of Art Core critic-in-residence, Andy Campbell.

She Works Flexible is a site for discourse and poetic exchange, dedicated to showing work from artists based or connected to Texas and the Gulf Coast in dialogue with national and international artists, writers and filmmakers.