Biography

Texan-born, New York-based artist Gary Cruz explores the potential for almost painterly abstraction in iPhone shot and edited works, creating compelling portraits of queer space. The "I’ll Take You There" series documents the interiors of gay bars he’s visited across the country and the world, reflecting on queer sites, aesthetic, community, and history. "I’ll Take You There" pairs the spontaneity of bar photos taken on an iPhone with Cruz’s consuming and ruminative process of digitally pushing, pulling, stretching and pinching images via a range of techniques and technologies. Cruz captures the lives, emotions of bar interiors. His unique editing process collapses and experiments on space, expanding the images away from the interiors themselves, threading a fine line of pushing into purely formal instincts while maintaining the mood and spirit of the source material.. Past, present and future coexist simultaneously, space is ambiguous. The works embody the duality of contemporary photographic techniques and the tradition of gestural painting. The artist is a recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant and Robert Rauschenberg Change Inc. Grant. His first solo show was at White Columns, New York City in 2003. He has participated in group shows at The Drawing Center, Bronx Museum for the Arts, Islip Art Museum, Art in General, and elsewhere.