KC Crow Maddux
TransFigured Diction / a body puzzled
feb 16th - march 17th 2019

haul gallery is pleased to begin its core exhibition program with KC Crow Maddux: TransFigured Diction / a body puzzled, the artist’s first solo exhibition with the gallery. With a new body of works that exist in between 2- and 3-dimensions, Maddux invites the viewer to consider the physical body against the methods of its interpretation. The artist’s visual language consists of overt body shapes - toes, arms, ribs, guts, and eyes. There are also more ambiguous shapes which could be something else. An anus is a flower and a mouth, a labia is a door, a mouth is vagina. 
According to the artist, these shapes – which are bold, clean, and brightly colored – are frames. In these frames, photographs of the artist himself sit among the body symbols. The images are direct and indexical, showing the nuance of Maddux’s hairy skin, his ear, his eyes, and the facial hair surrounding his mouth. They offer an intimate human element to the literal body-language surrounding the photos. While the frames appear uncompromising and totemic, they also meld disconnected body parts into one, creating a confusing frankenstein-esque diagram. The photographs, on the other hand, offer familiarity in their nuance. The viewer does not need language to understand - it is simply a body. 

KC Crow Maddux is trans, and in our conversations with him, we discussed how language reflects and prescribes our understanding of gender. Part of this prescription, according to Maddux, is that people feel the need to gender others before they can understand anything else about them. This is true even for his dog. “Is your dog a boy or a girl?” people ask. His response: “do dogs even have gender?” 

The works in this exhibition subvert the prescriptive nature of language on gender. While the forms of the frames seem easily understood, they confuse understanding the longer they are examined, just like language. But at the core of this confusion are people and their bodies, just being.  

About KC Crow Maddux 

Maddux  is a New York based trans artist whose work is intentionally difficult to categorize. His pieces often layer photography, painting, and sculptural processes to create a “trans” format. Past exhibitions include solo shows at Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Transform (Austin), Gescheidle Gallery (Chicago), Telephonebooth Gallery (Kansas City).