Zoe Walsh

Zoe Walsh uses a queer lens to deconstruct notions of sexuality that are enshrined in Western culture, along with assumptions surrounding gender expression and identity—all of which are grafted onto the physical body. Walsh’s work forges an aesthetic of trans subjectivity that offers openings out of the entrapments of the gender binary. Drawing from Warhol’s use of the silkscreened multiple as a method of deconstruction, Walsh addresses entanglements of embodiment and desire in spectatorship of gay male pornography, recently reworking late 1970s photographs produced by Falcon Studios. The erotically stylized figures at the site of a swimming pool are transformed through SketchUp and Photoshop, eventually appearing as stripped-down silhouettes in the paintings. Visual pleasure is sacred to Walsh’s work and linked to ideas of spectatorship and a desire to create space for trans identifications.

 

Zoe Walsh (b. 1989, Washington D.C.) received their BA from Occidental College and MFA from Yale University. Solo exhibitions include Exposures at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris and Desire Distilled, curated by Jess e Mockrin, at Pieter in Los Angeles. Recent group shows include Eleven Figures in II Parts, Atkinson Gallery, Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA; Brush Against, Peppers Art Gallery, University of Redlands, Redlands, CA; Queer Paranormal: An Exhibition Concerning Shirley Jackson and “The Haunting of Hill House,” Usdan Gallery, Bennington College, Bennington, VT; Virtual Dream Center, La Maison des Arts, Malakoff, France; and Queering Space, Alfred University Fosdick-Nelson Gallery, Alfred, NY. I came to watch the morning rise was Walsh’s first solo show with M+B in June 2020. Zoe Walsh lives and works in Los Angeles.