Evie Leder
1) Object Number Sixteen frame 003633 featuring James Jeske
2) Object Number Sixteen frame 12942 featuring James Jeske, 2017
Estimated Value: $500

Archival 100% cotton Hahnemuhle Baryta
10 x 8 inches
Unframed
Edition 2/10
Signed, on mount
Donated by the artist, courtesy of Black and White Projects.

Evie Leder’s “The Objects” is a meditation on the body consisting of approximately thirty videos, along with a series of detail photographs and video stills. Over a filming period of ten days, fourteen men—a diverse group of performers and artists in the San Francisco queer scene—visited the artist’s studio one by one. Creating an intimate space and relationship between artist and subject, Leder gave simple, but deliberate instruction: stand quietly, breathe, stretch, open and close eyes, turn. “I asked them to imagine themselves as forms in the frame . . . the symmetry of their arms and hands, how their breath changes their body. I asked them to imagine us looking at them.

Continuing the artist’s interest in gender, power, identity, and the tensions inherent within the medium of photography and video, the art-historical power exchange of the female subject to the male artist is also inverted. Reversing expectations of the gaze, of the subject, of masculinity, of queer subjecthood, Leder wanted to document men as they are in her community. “I’ve begun to explore the male body, to explore maleness and presence. . . . Inspired by a visit to the Getty Museum’s antiquities gallery, where there was so much to say classically about the male form, I wanted to continue this dialogue. This was a chance to reverse some of the usual expectations.” At its core, this series shifted from an exploration of these men as objects to those of subjects and allows for deeper contemplation of the viewers’ relationship to the gaze, to identity and power, and to the iconic imagery of the male nude.

About the Artist:
Evie Leder

Leder’s work concerns itself with the tensions inherent in the lens based image: The seductive nature, the flickering lights, the voyeurism, the acts of looking and being seen and the power of the gaze. Her work focuses on recontextualizing gender and the socially agreed-upon constructs that hold up our gender and sexuality systems.

Evie Leder was born in New Orleans in 1964. Leder is a three-time winner of San Francisco Arts Commission Individual Artist Commission. Leder is also the recipient of the Princess Grace Award, a New York Expo of Short Film Jury Award and a grant from the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Leder is a member of “A Simple Collective” in San Francisco and a founding member of “the lesbianfilm collective.”

Leder’s work has been shown internationally at film festivals and galleries including; Black and White Projects, The Kinsey Institute, The Sundance Channel, Tampere International Short Film Festival, Frameline, Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, South By Southwest, New York Expo of Short Film and Video, The New Festival, Mix NY, Outfest LA, SOMArts Cultural Center, Euro Underground Film Festival and Art Matters, among many others.

In 2016 Leder was selected as a charter tenant at the Minnesota Street Project Studio Program. She holds a BA from Hampshire College and an MFA from UC Davis.

Leder lives and works in San Francisco, California.

Website: evieleder.com | blackandwhiteprojects.com
Instagram: @evieleder | @blackandwhiteprojects_sf