SOLO SHOW COMING UP:

“MEN” @ Small Works Projects for SF Art Week 1/18/25-3/6/25

How do we perceive “men” at this fraught moment where they are cast as incompetent villains and usurpers of history and power while maintaining hegemonic status as well as being, you know, people? How do they perceive themselves and the evolving attitudes towards them and their prospects for cultural relevance? Cate White has made a new series of paintings of 70s and 80s dudes that are giving a blue collar, working man vibe. As a child and teenager in a small working class town in these decades, White registers these guys as her first imprint of masculinity. Rendered in humble environments, often with cats, on beds, in tubs, or in seductive poses, a whole show representing regular men doing regular things feels bordering on heretical during Trump’s inauguration as a populist president. And although she started this series last year after a run-in with Mark Fischer’s theories of hauntology and lost futures, White allows for heresy as a generative agitating force.