Tony Whitfield
Objects of Desire
Glazed ceramic (sold individually)
approx. 3-5" each
At the height of the AIDS-HIV epidemic, I began to collect objects that I found in nature and everyday life that affirmed for me that the world was inherently homoerotic and embedded in the objects that caught my attention were the triggers to my desire. While I didn’t talk much about my selection process, the collection grew and gave me great pleasure in my imagination. At some point, after 911, the focus of my practice began to bring together product design, biography, eroticism and my love, since my teen years, of ceramics. One of the early projects I embarked upon was the creation of porcelain “objects of desire” based upon found materials.
ABOUT THE ARTIST:
Tony Whitfield (b. 1954) is a 2023 Kresge Artist Fellow. His multimedia works have been presented by New York’s LaMaMa, Experimental Theater Club, in solo exhibitions at HOWL! Happening in NYC, the Instituto Cultural Peruano Norteamericano in Lima, Peru, the LGBTQ Centre in Paris, and group exhibitions at New York’s Museum of Art and Design, BRIC, Leslie Lohman Museum of Lesbian and Gay Art, The Pop-Up Museum of Queer History. His video installation, Paris, 1938, was featured in Paris’ NUIT BLANCHE 2017.