
Chris Doyle,
Peacock-Blue Sea, Asana Tabanobu, Away with Words, 2000, R-print, 31 x 47 1/2 in., Collection of Ben and Aileen Krohn
We suspect that it isn't a regular part of the itinerary for most of our readers to visit the
Frye Art Museum, a small free gallery at 704 Terry Ave on First Hill [
get directions]. But we urge you to make an exception this month. Go over there to soak in the art in the museum's front gallery. You'll see a small snapshot of the large collection of local art patrons Ben and Aileen Krohn.
The official description says this:
Although the "R word" has little currency in the art world of our day, some of the most inventive and provocative contemporary artwork is indeed representational. Recognizable subject matter permeates the art of young artists working in video, photography, painting, performance, and sculpture, as well as those creating innovative art in spaces between these traditional mediums.
Some bold collectors are following their lead. Swallow Harder is a snapshot of the contemporary art collection of Ben and Aileen Krohn. Since its beginning in the late 1990s, this Seattle-based collection has grown to several hundred pieces, including series by important artists in photography and works by emerging artists in video..
What it doesn't mention is the inspiration for the title given to the selection being shown at the Frye. The title comes partly from a work by Mark Mumford that hangs just inside the front door. We at first mistook the elegant sans-serif lettering that twice repeats the "Swallow Harder" phrase as museum graphics. But it's actually one of the works in the Krohn collection.
But there's more to the name.
Start your tour backwards to gain an -- umm -- deeper understanding of the title. Instead of starting in the room next to the entrance, move north (to your left as you enter) toward the Frye Cafe. Stop for a minute to enjoy the dancey trancey video projected onto a too-bright wall accompanied by a too-quiet mix of music. The work is called "Pills and Cigs" by Eli Sudbrack and the collective that calls itself "assume vivid astro focus."
If you've been lucky, you might have seen this same video projected with very loud music on the light wall of a club somewhere. Soak it in for a moment. And yeah, you'll quietly dance just a bit as you watch and listen.
From the video, turn to your left again to check out the large work in reds and brown hung on the adjoining wall. We suspect that many of the ladies who lunch each day in the cafe have determined to see it as an incongruous abstract landscape in this temple of representational art. But check out the name. This work is called (and we suspect that many of you would have already seen why) "76 Blow Jobs."
The artist, Jason Salavon, digitally averaged 76 pictures of blow jobs that he found on the internet and then digitally merged them into this one picture, which is, very clearly once your eyes have adjusted to the sampling, one blow job. (And, hey guys, admit it... Who among us hasn't experienced that moment when 76 blow jobs seem to merge into just one, eh?)
Almost hidden in the upper corner of each gallery wall, just beneath the ceiling, is a small picture of a hot shirtless guy making gestures with his hands. The photos have titles including, "Erection", "Climax", "Premature ejaculation", and "Well hung". According the gallery note under the first of the photos, this is supposed to be some kind of forgotten form of communication from the days then gay folk were more hidden. But that isn't what this is. The hot guy in the photos is signing. He's speaking a sub-dialect of American Sign Language or ASL. They're not hand signals from some old closet, but rather common and widely understood signs that are still used by deaf gay men.
Study the signs. The next time you see a group of guys signing in a bar with loud, thumping music, you might see one or a few of them used in a live conversation. (And, maybe too, it would help you understand the occasional peal of laughter from the group.)
But still, the guy who is signing is hot. The signs are hot.

Steven Miller,
Reyshard, Milky Series, 2004, 36 x 48 in., Collection of Ben and Aileen Krohn
Also displayed are huge black-and-white prints of three of the sixty subjects in
Steven Miller's remarkable 2004 series "Milky". He poured cold milk -- "sometimes forcefully" -- onto the heads of each of his shirtless subjects and recorded the reaction at the moment the fluid covered their face and chest. The subjects of these three prints are Robert, Dan, and the beautiful Reyshard.
(On
Miller's flash website, choose "Menu" and then click on "Milky" under "Gallery work" to see a web show of the images.)
They're hot and suggestive photos in and of themselves, but, of course, this is high art and so there's also a high-art explanation: "Miller suggests both the pleasure and risks associated with sexual exchange in a society where HIV is persistent in the minds of young people."
In his artist statement about the series, Miller writes, "The action of pouring another animal's fluid over the naked human body conveys the fundamental ways people react to the unknown". [
Read a review of a different show featuring this series.]
The painting "Boys" by out artist Marcellino Goncalves might actually seem slightly disturbing because this image of several boys at a pool
could have been an innocent Norman Rockwell type scene. But it isn't. Goncalves somehow gives the work an erotic edge.
In a
review of a different show of Gocalves' work, the critic wrote, "Goncalves is marking some dissolve in the sexual valence of representations of masculinity, which is why blur, fogginess, or sudden veering away from the photorealistic subtly disturb almost every painting."
OK. We guess one can see that even in this one painting.

Alice Wheeler,
Genderfuck Courtney, Collection of Ben and Aileen Krohn
And then there's the large color photos by Alice Wheeler of "Genderfuck Kurt" [Cobain] and "Genderfuck Courtney". Recognize someone?
There's far more even to this small selection from the Krohn collection. We can only hope that this first museum show from their collection isn't the last and that we might even someday see this collection of early 21st Century works given the same sort of reverence that the Frye's own early 20th Century collection receives.
And while you're at the museum, check out the new "salon style" display of the Frye's founding collection. The paintings collected by Charles and Emma Frye have in the past been displayed in their gaudy frames as isolated works on the museum's large walls. Displayed in that way, they seemed to our non-critic's eye to be "couch paintings". They seemed to call out for a gaudy faux-French furniture setting under each work.
The museum's current curator, Robin Held, discovered in photos of the Fryes' home that they had displayed these works in a far different way. The walls of their home were crammed with these paintings that the Fryes had come to love. Held has attempted to duplicate the Fryes' original salon style by hanging the founding collection in a wild profusion of color, texture, and gaudy frame from near floor to ceiling on the walls of the main galleries.
Somehow, each painting seems to gain more dignity in this crowded display as the eye focuses in on the fascinating. And -- a huge advantage -- we no longer expect to see a Louis XV couch under each painting.
The Krohn collection seems at first glance shockingly out-of-place in the previously-staid Frye Museum. But the Krohns' lust for art mirrors through the lens of a different time and far different tastes the same kind of lust for art that prompted the Fryes to build their collection a century before the Krohns.
"Swallow Harder" shows through May 14 at the Frye Art Museum, 704 Terry Ave, Seattle. Admission is free. Hours are 10am to 5pm Tuesday through Saturday. Noon to 5pm Sunday. Open late until 8pm on Thursdays.
See reviews of this show by real art critics here [PI], here [artnet], here [The Stranger], and here [Seattle Times].
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