TheDustyRebel

Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins: The Installations Of David Wojnarowicz  at P.P.O.W Gallery

“It was through installation that Wojnarowicz first confronted this pre-invented existence that had rejected him as a youth and continued to alienate him as a gay man, and as a person living with AIDS. The installations of David Wojnarowicz exemplify an artistic career that was ceaselessly diligent and passionately collaborative, with an energy that remains powerfully alive today.  Although Wojnarowicz was lost to complications related to AIDS in 1992, his unwillingness to let those in power ignore both his and a whole population’s extinction can still be felt in these works.” —  Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins: The Installations Of David Wojnarowicz at P.P.O.W Gallery (535 West 22nd Street, 3rd Floor)

Untitled (Burning Boy Installation) 1985

“In Wojnarowicz’s early installations such as Totem Room, 1983, at Hal Bromm Gallery and Untitled (Burning Boy Installation), 1985, in Robert Mnuchin’s basement; one sees a wild confluence of the personal and political. The installations’ brilliant colors and incendiary imagery reveal an artist grappling both with the violence of his childhood, and a deep-seated anger towards a society mat continued to alienate him as an adult.” - P.P.O.W Gallery

Installation: America Heads of Family/Heads of State (1990)

“The New Museum gave David a small room with the fourth wall open. David had hired Judy Glantzman to help him. They drove to the Palisades together in her car to collect twigs, leaves, and branches. He knew what elements he wanted to include, and he’d sketched a very complex, very labor-intensive plan in his journal. ….He called the piece ‘America: Heads of Family/Heads of State.’ At the center he suspended a large papier-mâché head, blindfolded with the word ‘QUEER’ written in red paint across the forehead. Below it were two video monitors on a stand, running some of the ITSOFOMO footage. He placed images around that stand–a photo of anti-gay picketers with signs like ‘AIDS is a Punishment from the Eternal Father’ next to a photo of Nazis destroying the Institute of Sexual Science. …. Laid out in front of that on a kind of nest made of branches and flowers was the child skeleton wearing a white dress. He placed a large print of One Day This Kid on the back wall, with photos of politicians like Reagan and Helms and pictures of his own parents on the side walls. Between the setup and This Kid, he’d created a kind of village on a leaf-and-twig-strewn floor, with a couple of small houses covered with dollar bills, his globe where the only country is America (repeated in all hemispheres), a doll reclining in a plexiglas cube, a child’s chair, with branches growing from it–and nestled at the center, Horton Hears a Who.” - Cynthia Carr, Fire in the Belly: The Life and Times of David Wojnarowicz

The Lazaretto: An Installation About the Current Status of the AIDS Crisis|

A  collaborative installation with Paul Marcus and Susan Pyzow, first installed anonymously at P.P.O.W Gallery in 1990.

“Most of my friends won’t call me since I got diagnosed. I heard one of them said, “AIDS is really depressing” and she needs a break from hearing about it.” — The Lazaretto installation, 1990

“I’ve been sick on and off of the last 8 months. A friend of mine went into a coma last week. I got a call from one of his relatives. They put a pillow over his face and the funeral will be next week.” — The Lazaretto installation, 1990

"I hate healthy people. It makes me sick to see them smile and have the ability to just wait and see as AIDS continues to spread and kill more and more people who don;t have access to quality health care and information that could safeguard their lives. One day these people will wake up and smell the bodies and finally start to scream Larry Kramer was right when he told people to riot. One day they’ll wish they were healthy enough to do so.” — The Lazaretto installation, 1990

More photos: David Wojnarowicz, Gallery Shows

Full album of photos from Soon All This Will Be Picturesque Ruins: The Installations Of David Wojnarowicz on TheDustyRebel Facebook page.