Peter Clough
HEAD
June 15th – July 14th, 2019

So began my criminal life, then punishable by the laws of the state of Ohio—at the time—by about twenty years imprisonment, I guess. Each time. Total incarceration in Ohio: between five and six thousand years.
            —Samuel Steward, unpublished memoirs, in reference to the criminalization of oral sex between men in the 1920s
 
haul gallery is pleased to announce HEAD, a solo show by multidisciplinary artist Peter Clough, opening on June 15, 2019. HEAD continues Clough’s ongoing investigation into the ways that stigma and desire come together in shaping sexual identity, with a particular focus on kink and gender fluidity. Bringing together projection, sculpture, painting, photography and textiles, the works in HEAD are celebrations of queer desire. Timed to coincide with World Pride and wave of Stonewall 50 exhbitions across the city, Head is a celebration of romance, humor, and intimacy.
 
Dominating much of the gallery is a new video projection, Blowjob. Shot in ultra slow motion over the course of a 12-minute encounter, this work is slowed down to more than two hours, transforming the fleeting act of fellatio into a feature-length meditation on the joining of two bodies. Lit with a heavenly glow that surrounds the subjects and wraps them in white light, Blowjob is insistently romantic. Within the context of World Pride, a festival of frenetic movement and exuberant color, Blowjob invites us to slow down and find pride in the radical experience of intimacy.
 
Alongside this large projection, Clough presents a series of small sculptural collages, self-portraits of his own face—heads in another sense. Made from wood, paint, and photographs of Clough’s body, each collage is a deconstruction and reassembly of Clough’s visage. Small model platforms, assembled from balsa wood like a model of a theatrical stage set, adorn the works. Little photographic versions of Clough himself inhabit these spaces, clothed in a variety of fetish wear—leather harnesses, rubber catsuits, pink lacy panties. Perfectly at home in Haul’s dungeon-like gallery space, the works in HEAD interrogate the idea of self, pulling apart the flesh to uncover what lies underneath.
 
Peter Clough was born in Boston in 1984 and received an MFA from NYU Steinhardt in 2009. He has presented work in New York at MoMA PS1, Printed Matter, Fresh Window Gallery, Microscope Gallery, Southfirst Gallery, Wayfarers Gallery, LeRoy Neiman Gallery, SPRING/BREAK Art Fair, the Center for Performance Research, and Dixon Place Theater, in Pittsburg at the Andy Warhol Museum, in L.A. at Human Resources, in Nashville at Open Lot, in Berlin at Peres Projects and Space/Time at FLUTGRABEN e.V., in Seoul at Konkuk University and The House of Collections, in Antwerp at the Monty, in Ghent at Off/off Cinema and in Oslo at Kunstnernes Hus, Fotogalleriet, and SOPPEN Performance Festival at Ekebergparken. Clough’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Frieze, and Time Out magazine. Clough lives and works in New York.