Bill Arning

It seems a tough time to make work about cultural identity, with all the big “identity politics” exhibitions—Masculine Masquerade, Black Male, Mistaken Identities—being studied now as historical perspectives.

Ernesto Neto’s art, formal abstraction in the shape of sexy biomorphs, might seem an oxymoron. Curator Bill Arning and the Brazilian artist address the dichotomy of rigorous pleasure.

Minimal in form, art-historically loaded, the work invited one to cut a rug while interdicting the pleasure with its massive intrusiveness.

When Carrie Yamaoka makes her mirrorlike paintings she simultaneously gives up control and seizes it. 

Keith Mayerson is hard to pin down. Just when you have a handle on his work, he shifts in some unforeseeable but intuitively right way. He made a splash in 1994 with a 60-plus drawing suite retelling the story of Pinocchio from a queer perspective.

Ben Kinmont constructs his work around boring domestic activities, in so doing he makes invisible social relationships visible.