Gray Wielebinski at Anat Ebgi

Gray Wielebinski, Body Double (installation view) (2023). Wood, paint, paper, lacquer, vinyl, duct tape, paper bag, and cotton, 60 x 11 inches. Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Mason Kuehler.

Beneath the natural light afforded by a circular skylight, Gray Wielebinski’s Fratricide harnesses duality and contradiction to explore the web of moralistic directives and internalized anxieties surrounding violence and eroticism. Featuring photo collages on Greek fraternity paddles, a hand-braided leather whip, and a privacy screen, the exhibition utilizes divisive imagery to map the territory between conflict and coexistence.

Two oversized, collaged Greek paddles sit propped against the gallery walls as if recently used, while four smaller paddles are mounted like keepsakes on the opposite wall. In Surrogate (2023), the wooden paddle serves as a backdrop to unite discordant photographic clippings pasted over splotches of pink paint. The paddle’s use as a tool of flagellation—in fraternity hazing rituals or BDSM—sets a tone of violence that conditions the impact of Wielebinski’s collage. While photographs of bodies bound by ropes and chains seem to fit within this violent tone, the addition of a cowboy and pickup truck alongside two people kissing beneath the words “I transessuall” recalls the fissures and overlaps between queerness and conventional ideals of masculinity. The mysterious incorporation of two pregnant women lifting their shirts to expose protruding bellies further complicates the piece—when brought into dialogue with the surrounding imagery of violence and eroticism, notions of maternal care and fetal gestation feel almost sinister. These dichotomous visuals push us into a state of cognitive dissonance, as we attempt to trace the common thread of violence to a singular, dominant meaning.

The entangled associations conjured by the photographic collages challenge our conditioned desire to construct straightforward narratives that circumvent the porous divisions between violence and eroticism, pleasure and pain. Situated a few feet from the gallery wall, Privacy Screen #2 (2023), is composed of three panels patterned with a chain-link motif. At the top of the steel structure, two sets of looping razor wire frame what appears to be a blazing sun.

Much like the fissions present in Wielebinski’s collages, the razor wire lends an air of hostility to the idea of privacy screens as demure, even elegant objects. As an instrument of aggressive demarcation, barbed wire serves as a warning. But here, the shapes generated by the wire create openings in the screen, inviting the viewer to look through it. In doing so, Privacy Screen #2 physicalizes the bleed between the imagery presented within Wielebinski’s collages, offering modes of access rather than an impenetrable border. In a culture that utilizes fear to police our bodies and desires, Fratricide offers a lens through which to examine the snares and fissures of moralistic binaries, unleashing a cathartic and confounding whirlwind of images and emotions that clash, prod, and seep into each other until the boundaries between them begin to crack.

Gray Wielebinski: Fratricide runs from October 28–December 16, 2023 at Anat Ebgi (6150 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90048). 

Gray Wielebinski, Fratricide (installation view) (2023). Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Matthew Kroening.

Gray Wielebinski, Fratricide (installation view) (2023). Wood, paint, paper, and lacquer, 60 x 11 inches. Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Mason Kuehler.

Gray Wielebinski, Fratricide (detail) (2023). Wood, paint, paper, and lacquer, 60 x 11 inches. Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Mason Kuehler.

Gray Wielebinski, Prerogative (installation view) (2022). Custom leather plaited whip, and steel, 44 x 38 x 6 inches. Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Matthew Kroening.

Gray Wielebinski, Fratricide (installation view) (2023). Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Matthew Kroening.

Gray Wielebinski, Surrogate (detail) (2023). Wood, paint, paper, lacquer, and vinyl, 36 x 7.5 inches. Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Mason Kuehler.

Gray Wielebinski, Us (detail) (2023). Wood, paint, paper, and lacquer, 36 x 7.5 inches. Anat Ebgi, Los Angeles, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Anat Ebgi. Photo: Mason Kuehler.

Isabelle Rust is a writer, researcher, and art studio manager living in Los Angeles. Through an application of critical theory, poetry, and autofiction, her written work explores archives, print media, personal narrative, and the subconscious. She holds a BA in Art History from Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

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