At the Satellite Gallery until May 11

Traditionally, the male body has been one that has been covered or hidden while the female body has been subject to the (male) gaze. Over the past few decades, however, the exposed male body has increasingly become visible in popular culture, in everything from underwear ads and fitness magazines to Abercrombie and Fitch and Hollister shopping-bag porn. However, sexualized male bodies still remain far more limited in visual representation.

Full Frontal, an exhibition curated by Katie Schroeder, examines the relationship between masculinity and sexualization. Vancouver-based artists, such as Iain Baxter&, Russell FitzGerald, Glenn Lewis, and Vincent Trasov, served as inspiration for the exhibition.

Depictions of both the penis as well as the phallus—the symbolic representation of male power—are presented in a variety of works by the likes of Brian Jungen, Robert Mapplethorpe  with markups by Image Bank, Eric Metcalfe, Marina Roy, and more from the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery collection.

Although the subject matter may be of a sexual nature, the imagery is often frank, stark or cerebral, rather than sensual or arousing, and several examples address the phallus in a non-literal, indirect manner.

For instance, although Attila Richard Lukacs is known for his homoerotic paintings of skinheads, We care a lot (1990) eschews sexuality to explore rigid social constructions of masculine professions. Six painted portraits of men in authority positions, wearing suits and ties, is accompanied by a word such as "military", "academics", and "discipline". The dedication "To Interested Young Men" suggests the indoctrination of male youth into ideologies of masculinity. The triangular grid formation suggests power structures and hierarchies. Moreover, while men have dominated creative fields such as the fine arts, cooking, and fashion design, only traditionally "masculine" professions are shown.

The subversion of heterosexual masculinity is a recurring theme evident in several works.

Jack Shadbolt's goache on newsprint Untitled (1972) subverts the competitive and combative nature of sports by presenting an image of two hockey players as ambiguous: are they wrestling, or are they making love? Or is it both: a representation of the internal conflict between a desire for intimacy, whether physical or emotional, in spite of societal norms governing male-male interaction. Accordingly, the image raises questions about how physical interaction between men is most commonly accepted and presented in society.

That response to the dearth of images also informs several other works. In particular, a number of works speak to how queer imaginations have resorted to reconstructing mainstream narratives in order to find meaning in a heteronormative, and often homo-invisible, world.

Several works reappropriate images from publications (magazines, newspapers) into romantic or erotic collages. For example, in Jess (Collins)'s When a Young Lad Dreams of Manhood (1953), images of naked men are overlaid on a women's perfume ad, challenging not just sexual boundaries but also gender roles.

The phenomenon of how hyper-masculinity—the celebration of masculinity to the exclusion of anything feminine—becomes simultaneously homophobic and homoerotic is reflected in Noam Gonick's work. No Safe Words (2009) is a faux promotional video that juxtaposes and blurs lines between images of football, gay pride parade footage, athletic hazing, military culture, and visual and audio vocabulary commonly used in sports media. A football player is stripped by his teammate, tied up, and drenched in liquids and powders. Muscular, barechested athletes (portrayed by the UBC Thunderbirds) kneel with their hands tied behind their backs and underwear covering their faces as water is poured over them. Police and firefighter presence at pride parades reveal how the gay rights movement has moved mainstream, existing alongside authorities that had once oppressed queer communities.   

With its references to emasculation and torture, the work raises questions about how the eroticization of and attraction to masculine culture and power structures by queer communities can reinforce or feed into these social constructions.

By collapsing boundaries between dichotomies such as gay and straight, masculine and feminine, visibility and invisibility, or love and hate, these works expose commonalities and hypocrisies, and provide insights into the limitations of how we define masculinity. As a whole, the exhibition also brings to light how much more of an active, ongoing, and widespread conversation is sorely needed about what it means to be male in the 21^st century.