McDermott & McGough, “Velvet Rage, Flaming Youth, and the Gift of Desperation”

This dapper art duo emerged in the 1980s with work that filtered Queer Aesthetics through a Edwardian lens. Over the years they’ve produced a considerable output of paintings, sculptures, photos and films, all of them tied together with 24/7 performance in which the pair not only appear in public dressed as fin de siècle dandies, but also live as people did in 19th-century New York, without benefit of electric lighting and indoor plumbing. This show, their debut with the gallery, features work that takes a retrospective look at their own oeuvre, as well as other pieces that focus on the theme of self-pleasuring, including one sculptural tableau built as a shrine to Onan the Masturbator.