Ryan Danny Owens’ exhibit at TRUCK Contemporary Art features haunting near-life-size topographical erasures of collected archival queer male-oriented pornography, mostly North American from the 1970s and 1980s.
Ryan Danny Owen is a non-binary visual artist, author, and queer historian based in Mohkinstsis Treaty 7 territory — Calgary.
The multi-room exhibit rediscovers and reintroduces histories of queer identity through real and metaphorical loss. “With my work, I am seeking to challenge the relationship to pornography, and the relationship to figures; we are looking at them in a way that is different to how we would look at them in pornography,” Danny Owen says.
So, what is a topographical erasure? Many of the artworks are printed to be almost person-size before Danny Owen sculpts the paper with a toolbox of erasers, sand erasers, sandpaper, and razors, literally removing parts of the image.
“There are tons of different ways of using erasers to do it. With this one, it’s small circular strokes; and that’s what gives it the hazier edging fade out. That one is much deeper, essentially looks like a smoke monster,” Danny Owen says. “… A lot of times I’m entering into this work thinking, ‘I don’t look like any of these people, how do I impose myself on to these pieces,’ and that’s what the rubbing is.”
Making and unmaking, finding hidden things and then expanding and erasing them is all part of Danny Owen’s process.
“Archival material is a huge part of what I do, and I like when it challenges the reality of: did I make this, did I find this, where did it come from?” notes Danny Owen. They have sourced material in a variety of considered ways.
“Asian men are extremely hard to find, in the same way that black men are extremely hard to find in a way that’s not disrespectful, especially in older material. It is really challenging work, and the rare time I’ll find a person of color in magazines that is being treated really beautifully, those ones are priceless to me.”
Another part of the exhibit is a fabricated motel room. “It’s going off this whole idea of a soundstage set for a fictional pornographic film. The room is going to be based on the blue tone that continually shows up in pornographic films and media, but also ‘blue’ as a concept… I’ve always thought that ‘blue’ has an undeniable queerness to it, that I have wanted to explore throughout my whole practice.”
One item in the room is an oversized blue rhinestone-bedazzled cowboy hat, handmade and hand-dyed by Danny Owen.
The term “blue movie” for a pornographic film dates to a time when a blue-toned film of low quality was used for explicit videos.
Queer and pop culture icon Andy Warhol, wrote, directed and produced Blue Movie; which was the first movie depicting explicit sex to receive wide-range theatrical release.
Danny Owen’s triptych called Blue is named for the blue satin sheets on which the subject is posed. “The thing with Blue, is that I’ve never seen him in any other photographs. A lot of times, figures will fade in and out throughout material, I will see them in different scenes and different places… this guy only took a handful of photographs and then he just disappeared. And there is a complexity with that where, in proximity to the AIDS crisis, a lot of these men probably did not survive.”
“There is something really ghostly about this material… It’s an interesting thing to have work that touches so many different parts of time: it’s the figure, it’s the person that owned this before me, and then it’s me coming back so many years afterwards to reintroduce and challenge what this material is as a queer person.”
Danny Owen is also co-creator with Kat Simmers of the ongoing graphic novel series Pass Me By, published by Renegade Arts Entertainment. Book two, Pass Me By: Electric Vice, was awarded Graphic Novel of the Year in 2022 by the Alberta Book Publishers Association. Another addition to the series is in production and will be released next year.
TRUCK Contemporary Art is a non-profit artists run gallery and resource centre, recently renovated and revitalized; located in the west end of the Beltline at 2009 10 Ave. S.W. Open Wednesdays to Saturdays, 1 to 6 pm. truckcontemporaryart.com
