Bruce LaBruce, Untitled Hardcore Zombie Project
May 23 to June 27, Peres Projects (LA)
The Dark Prince of Homosexuals returns to LA this summer, leaving behind him a trail of dead. Following the recent release of his brilliant zombie porn Otto; Or, Up with Dead People on DVD, LaBruce continues his interrogation of post-mortem coitus, and serves up orgies, literally, of blood and violence. Flattening gay culture, hardcore music, and tropes of zombie-ism from the halcyon days of Romero through today, his photographs and performances shock at first, and slyly ingratiate themselves when you realize they’re not just about sex and death, but conformist sexual identities and consumer capitalism.

Conrad Ventur
June to September, The Andy Warhol Museum
The ghost of Andy Warhol has haunted many contemporary artists with visions of emptiness as form and glamour as content, but especially emerging artist Conrad Ventur—so it’s all too appropriate that his lithe, luminous ruminations on kitsch icons will be seen at the Warhol Museum this summer. Projections of Marlene Deitich, Marilyn Monroe, and Dolly Pardon performing classics are filtered though Swarovski crystals or bounced off disco balls in his ethereal, immersive installations.

Ingar and Dragset, The Collectors
Danish and Nordic Pavilions, Venice Biennale
Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, who have collaborated since 1995, will realize a project entitled The Collectors in this year’s Venice Biennale. Uniquely spanning two venues, visitors will first tour the Danish Pavilion with a real estate agent, connecting to the real-life circumstance of the house being on the market, and exploring the family dramas the eventually drove the sale. After crossing to the Nordic Pavilion, the audience will join guards dressed like rent boys who have taken up residence in the imagined home of the fictional “Mister B.” Counter to the biennial’s usual pomp and self-importance, over 20 other artists and creative types contributed work to support, according to Elmgreen, “the overall ambience of ‘The Collectors’—a domestic intimacy and homely feeling.”

Gay Icons
July 2 to October 18, National Portrait Gallery (London)
As the time it takes to forget yesteryear (or even yesterday) gets shorter and shorter, occasionally it behooves us to stop and take a significant look backwards. The National Portrait Gallery in London is doing so this summer, with Gay Icons, a collection of photographs of important figures in gay culture from the past 150 years. A committee with the likes of Elton John and Ian McKellen selected the personalities featured, which will include everyone from Harvey Milk to the heterosexual but homo-friendly Patricia Highsmith.

Screwball Asses
April 25 to June 7, The Company
Independent curators Hedi El Kholti and David Jones reopen the Pandora’s Box of gay identity, with work by 12 artists (including themselves) illustrating the “archetypes” that inform the way we construct our social selves. With offerings like Slava Mogutin and Brian Kenny’s extreme collages, Gary Lee Boas’ photos of small-town drag queens, and Sheyla Baykal's photographs of 70s Lower East Side counterculture, the show pulls from the heady heights of the fringe to speak to the middle. Although not comprehensive or definitive, the curators say, “maybe it's a way to look at some ideas that sound obsolete to see if there’s something there that could be useful, beautiful, or timeless.”

Summer Round-up 2009