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Alone With You

Doug Ischar

2011 00:18:13 United StatesEnglishColor4:3Video

Description

At the heart of Alone With You is the notion of impassioned avarice, i.e. the kind of motivated acquisitiveness that drives both erotic desire and obsessive collecting.

Alone is built around two main characters, a hot young pro-wrestler – the maker’s object of desire – and Robert Mapplethorpe, the artist/collector par excellence, who serves as both alter-ego and nemesis for Ischar himself. But there are no neatly contained categories here, and elements slip constantly between the various qualities of compulsion/compassion being explored. Alone... is a densely ‘vertical’ work, its use of superimpositions and shifting frame sizes giving it an almost ‘anti-cinematic’ quality. The work is roughly divided into two parts with the second section re-shaping and re-employing elements from the first.

About Doug Ischar

Since the early 1990s, Ischar has worked in sound, video, and photography. His work has evolved from large-scale multimedia installations to single-channel videos that address issues surrounding gay identity, desire, and loss. Currently an associate professor of photography at the University of Illinois, Chicago, he has exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa; Photographers Gallery, London; L.A.C.E., Los Angeles; and Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo.

— Wexner Center for the Arts, April 2011