{"id":24122,"date":"2023-11-27T10:18:27","date_gmt":"2023-11-27T15:18:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/?p=24122"},"modified":"2023-11-27T12:46:38","modified_gmt":"2023-11-27T17:46:38","slug":"carlos-reyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/2023\/11\/27\/carlos-reyes\/","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Reyes\u2019s Minimalist Monuments To Lost Gay Clubs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Carlos Reyes\u2019s one-room exhibition, \u201c18,\u201d at MIT\u2019s List Visual Arts Center<\/a> in Cambridge from Oct. 27, 2023, to March 10, 2024, are four 2-foot-wide monoliths made from cedar planks, scratched with graffiti. Called \u201cWest Side Club,\u201d the 2018 sculptures were assembled from wood salvaged from New York\u2019s now defunct West Side Club, which announced on Instagram that it had \u201cpermanently closed\u201d<\/a> at the end of May 2021. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club had billed itself as \u201cNew York\u2019s private social relaxation club for gay and bisexual men.\u201d The graffiti here includes hearts and initials of couples, names, places (Istanbul, London, India, Palermo, Trinidad, VNZLA [Venezuela], Portugal, Colombia, Cuba, and Sri Lanka), and sexual come-ons (\u201cAny age, Any Race\u201d). “Live free,” one carving reads. It\u2019s not just the words though\u2014the way they’re carved into the wood is evocative of touch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “West Side Club,” 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The monoliths read as minimalist monuments, a sort of tombstones, to disappearing gay cultural spaces. Reyes, who was born in 1977 in Chicago, and lives in New York and Caguas, Puerto Rico, works in a tradition of Felix Gonzalez-Torres of the late 1980s and early \u201890s, before his death from AIDS in 1996, and Macon Reed\u2019s 2015 walk-in, participatory installation \u201cEulogy for the Dyke Bar,\u201d<\/a> which asked: What happened to all the dyke bars?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a shelf across one wall of the gallery is Reyes\u2019s \u201cNight Club\u201d series from 2016, blown-glass sculptures in which he endeavors to \u201ctrace air and breath with an amorphous solid.\u201d The clear glass\u2014sometimes with metal elements\u2014can bring to mind \u201cjugs, paddles, and spoon,\u201d according to a gallery sign. Perhaps also bongs? The idea, perhaps, is about the intimacy of shared breath. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Among the group of sculptures is Reyes\u2019s 2017 \u201c7269 (I),\u201d a drum-like glass cylinder with a metal shower drain on top. The drain, the gallery explains, was salvaged from Melrose Spa<\/a>, \u201ca long-running men\u2019s bathhouse in Los Angeles that was a notorious cruising site.\u201d It closed in 2017, after 52 years of operation, when it lost its lease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Carlos<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201c18,\u201d which was organized by List Assistant Curator Selby Nimrod, also includes Reyes\u2019s 2021 sculpture, \u201cPROMESA,\u201d seven Ikea floor lamps gathered under one ring-shaped shade. Amid the pandemic, the gallery says, Reyes relocated to Puerto Rico, where there were frequent power outages. The title refers to the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act, federal legislation from 2016 that responded to the territory\u2019s debt crisis by giving \u201coversight of the island\u2019s critical infrastructure and expenditures to a financial control board that enacted a wide-ranging austerity plan and privatized formerly public utilities,\u201d according to a sign in the gallery, \u201cincluding electricity.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

If this is the kind of coverage of arts, cultures and activisms you appreciate, please support Wonderland by contributing to Wonderland on Patreon<\/a>. And sign up for our free, occasional newsletter<\/a> so that you don’t miss any of our reporting. (All content \u00a9Greg Cook 2023 or the respective creators.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “PROMESA, 2021 (foreground), and “West Side Club,” 2018 (background). (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Carlos<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “West Side Club,” 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “West Side Club,” 2018.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “PROMESA, 2021 (foreground), and “West Side Club,” 2018 (background). (Greg Cook photo)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “Night Club” series, all 2016.\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Carlos
Carlos Reyes, “Night Club” series, all 2016.\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Carlos Reyes\u2019s one-room exhibition, \u201c18,\u201d at MIT\u2019s List Visual Arts Center in Cambridge from Oct. 27, 2023, to March 10, 2024, are four 2-foot-wide monoliths made from cedar planks, scratched with graffiti. Called \u201cWest Side Club,\u201d the 2018 sculptures were assembled from wood salvaged from New York\u2019s now defunct West Side Club, which announced on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24146,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100],"tags":[1214,1211,571],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24122"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24237,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24122\/revisions\/24237"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregcookland.com\/wonderland\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}