Catch two photo exhibits by Kael T Block, “XX BOYS” and “Lust.s./Love.s,” from 7pm to 9pm on Tuesday, June 20th, the Lexington Club, located at 3464 19th Street in San Francisco’s Mission District.

From the XX BOYS blog:

Kael T Block’s work reminds us of early 80’s New York artists such as Goldin, Wojnarovic, and O’ Sullivan. It too is a journey into a peculiar territory, populated with the marginalized which is to say those forced to choose their own freedom. It’s not only about transgenderism or homosexuality. Block’s work, as that of his New York predecessors, is not only documentarian. The marginality that forces us to constantly invent ourselves- invent our lifes, our bodies, our attitudes, our pleasures- shows itself and directs itself in these images.

Block’s images are not tainted with the depression which invades the images of the early 80’s artists who lived the last sparkle of the 70’s utopia: the discovering of revolution, drugs, sexual freedom, and community life. We are forced to create our life in the present because our generation arrived after the party and we have no golden age to regret. Therefore the people inhabiting Kael t Block’s photographs must face life and try to make it a rich and exciting experience despite the difficulties of such an undertaking.

To be photographed by Block and to pass in the space of image and representation, is to become in turn an icon, if only for a private circle of friends, or for an internet community. The advent of Internet, digital photography and video permits one to create a micro- sytem of representation and one’s own star system in democratising picture’s production and accessability.

Differing from the 70’s, when Warhol was saying that everyone could have his 15 minutes of celebrity, today we can get a minority celebrity. This celebrity is anchored in the counter-culture and the Do It Yourself practices. It’s not necessary anymore to have acces to the mainstream media in order to have a public image and become desirable in your own eyes or in others’. The early 21st century offers the perspective of a democratic and pragmatic counter-culture. Therefore we can think of Bock’s work not only as an alternative proposition to the values of Beauty, Sexiness and Glamour, but also as a permanent renewal and expansion of the iconic pantheon who embodies these ideas. This pantheon is not a parody of the Hollywood pantheon but is a new referencial system. Block creates a system, though admittedly fed with innumerable images of our culture, belongs to us and in which we identify.

Vincent Simon

Click here to visit Kael’s MySpace page.