How far does your identity as a ‘man’ affect your body shape? That’s a pivotal cog whirring within muscular gay male artist BJ Broekhuizen’s new exhibition ‘Man’, unveiled last week as part of suave curator Morris Monroe’s ongoing Arthole project. Arthole seeks to showcase and promote the most exciting new queer art from around London, with monthly exhibitions splayed in vibrant iconography across the walls of East End bar/club/community vortex, the Dalston Superstore.
by Patrick Cash
Broekhuizen, who has ‘tattoos in unexpected places’ according to his promo work, documents the battle created between the media myths of masculinity and awareness of the personal self. ‘I think having a battle with oneself on a daily basis is part of growing and developing,’ he states. ‘It’s to me a constant fight of ideas and perceptions. I often call my brush my knife, my weapon.’
Undoubtedly, Broekhuizen’s years as a fixture on the gay scene also sharpens and focuses the fight he carves with his paint. The exhibition flows through five stages. Beginning with the vague, nebulous faces that reflect formulating or uncertain identities, the work finds flesh-filled form through the strings of inner muscle, like bodies shape in gyms – ‘about stripping back the layers of flesh’, says Broekhuizen – before the dark and spiky images of self-destruction, reflecting a loss of self. Works like ‘King’ in this part of the collection could be interpreted as a shade of the sleepless chill out/chems scene in the capital.
But the most beautiful and illuminating section of this exhibition is the most hope-filled; the final stage of spiritual awakening. Here livid, graffiti-like colours shimmer upon the canvas, and the works incorporate words and poetry into their painted art, as the prism spins from self-destruction to self-expression and redemption through identity. Finding a connection within oneself, and in the powers of the human mind, is how one can best express lasting strength and masculinity in the modern age; masculinity a concept that can exist in either men or women, or in genders in-between the spectrum.
Following the lineaology of Broekhuizen’s ‘Man’ work from beginning to end, we begin to find the falsity of what being a ‘man’ means as told to us by cultural norms and wider society. It can’t be found in the perfect male body, in the gym, in drugs, in steroids. But self-acceptance, and all the rainbow-like colours blossoming with it, can be discovered inside.
• Dalston Superstore, 117 Kingsland Road, E8 2PB.
Runs to 5th May
