Strauss Bourque-LaFrance
Friday, 11 April 2014
Work from his oeuvre.
“Strauss Bourque-LaFrance’s work is often driven by formal decisions, though each gesture is latent with subversive qualities. This mechanism predates his 2010 MFA thesis show, “Rotten Sun,” but these moves can be seen here—perhaps most explicitly. Thesis exhibitions that year at Tower Projects, a factory warehouse-turned-gallery in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia, used the size and character of the space to their advantage, of which Strauss’s work was a prime example. In a piece titled Black Rainbow Gets a Free Ride, three tropes (a Carl Andre-like wooden sculpture, being straddled by a black/fecal rainbow, and a 1970s gay biker hat placed conspicuously on top of the wooden sculpture) bring sobering straightforward art-historical (evoking Minimalism)/historical (evoking Stonewall) presence to a room that looks like the aftermath of a late ’80s coke-driven SoCal occult gay party gone awry.” – Em Rooney