Installation view
Jonesy's PACK
Curated by Jonesy
October 21 - November 17
Opening Reception: Sunday October 21, 5-8pm
Host Lex Vaughn and music by Nathan Hauenstein
amy von harrington
Beth Cita & Lex Vaughn
Bettina Hubby
Clay Kerrigan
Crystal Claire
Elliot Reed
Enrique Castrejon
Jaime C. Knight
Jim Krewson
Jonesy
Joshua Rains
Kelly Marie Martin
Kiernan Cobarrubia
Lindsey Taylor
Matthew LAX
Matt Savitsky
Micah Espudo
Michael Earl
Nicolaus Chaffin
Nikki Darling
Samara Halperin
Silky Shoemaker
Additional contributions from James McCarthy and Hedi El Kholti
Klowden Mann is proud to present Jonesy’s PACK, an exhibition by Los Angeles-based artist Jonesy along with a group of artists he has invited to create and physically stage hand-embellished vests or ‘cuts’ in a manner that recalls the initiation ritual of biker clubs, and that ritual’s extension into other subcultures. The exhibition will center around a live collaborative performance taking place on Sunday, October 21st, from 5pm to 8pm in the evening. In the following two weeks, the evidence of the performance will be on view at the gallery accompanied by other video works by Jonesy and Jaime C. Knight, through Saturday November 2nd.
The live performance will be modeled after a hybrid of a drag king show, a fashion show, and a beer bust, hosted by Lex Vaughn with music by Nathan Hauenstein. Jonesy and the 22 artists he has invited to participate will walk their ‘cuts' down a catwalk from back to front of the gallery, then hang their vests on rows of armature along the longest gallery wall. The MC will pay homage to each artist with a short speech as they walk, and a DJ setup will accompany the artist’s creations. Inviting the artists to view their cuts not only as an expression of their individual identity but also as an exploration of the idea of icons and iconography, many of the individual artists chose to represent figures significant to them and to their community. Crystal Claire chose Annie Sparkle, Enrique Castrejon chose Los Lonely Queers, Kelly Marie Martin chose David Wojnarowicz, Nikki Darling’s vest was made in homage to LA Latinx punk musician Alice Bag, who will be in attendance at the show, and the performance of that cut will end with Darling putting the vest on Bag.
Throughout the event and exhibition, gallery walls will be covered with alternating pink-painted stripes and wallpaper created by Hedi El Kholti, heightening the context of the show as an extension of the language of community and identity performance that centers Jonesy’s work. During the walk itself, a live-feed of the performance will be projected on the back wall of the gallery as a way to record and double the in-person experience. The recording will continue to be projected for the full two weeks of the exhibition as a celebratory haunting of the remnants of the live show.
In the gallery project space, a two-channel video will play The die Kränken LA/ATX Pocket Expo project, a piece Jonesy and Jaime C. Knight created in part for their exhibition at ONE Archives last year, but exhibited in LA for the first time here at Klowden Mann. It features a loop with a short Hal Fischer documentary with a pairing of portraits on Austin, TX queer community. A significant California conceptual photographer in the queer community, Hal Fischer’s 1977 book Gay Semiotics: A Photographic Study of Visual Coding Among Homosexual Men was inspired by ‘The Hanky Code’, created to streamline interaction and signal an individual’s sexual interest or particular fetish. The die Kränken LA/ATX Pocket Expo project presents a cheeky look at contemporary sexual proclivities produced in the spirit of the original Hanky Code.
The video works offer the visitor an entry point into Jonesy’s general practice, evidencing the more public element of the way in which he collaborates with community, while also acting as a preview of future iterations PACK may take in video form. Jonesy’s work forefronts the expressive language of inclusion, power, belonging and representation among subcultures, including the queer community of which he is a part. PACK continues his investigation into how we codify, project and perform our identities, and how we use iconography to make our identities readable to the world—especially for those with the commonality of experience to recognize the language we use in our performance. In that vein, Jonesy also references the photos of Swiss youths by Karlheinz Weinberger, making a parallel between his “die Halbstark”, (translated as half-strong or “the unusual”) and the outcast nature of his own queer community.
"The youths in the photos mug tough looks for the camera, they decorate their clothes with chains, props, fringe, leather and the crude symbols of their own inspired gang culture, all the while adorned with the garish and seemingly absurd representations of the American music and screen icons they imitate…
In emblazoning our torsos with items of personal significance and political ideas, we save ourselves from a world menaced by ubiquitous branding that seeks to reduce us all to wearing products that have rendered self expression void and brainwashed the masses into thinking that camaraderie is achieved through the readily obtainable products we purchase."
- Jonesy, in his invitation to the artists in PACK
Jonesy is an artist and filmmaker working in Los Angeles. He studied photography and video at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA. In the 90’s he was a member of the queercore band Fagbash in San Francisco which continues to inform his aesthetic. Since 2008, he has been creating films, music, installation and performance. In 2015, Jonesy founded die Kränken after doing research into the large collection of holdings of Southern California Gay Motorcycle Clubs at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. With a team of collaborators, they have built a body of work around the vast ephemera of these clubs for a 2017 exhibition at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. Jonesy’s work has been screened and shown at the Hammer Museum, Yale University, the REDCAT Theatre, Oberhausen Film Festival, POPA Buenos Aires, the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Anthology Film Archives, OUTsider Festival, Outfest Los Angeles, and the British Film Institute.