Erasure Gallery 2026 x On Books: David Wojnarowicz

Erasure Gallery was born in 2025 out of anger and frustration in the face of the seemingly relentless erasure of gay and queer stories from our cultural record. Recent exhibitions that effectively straight-washed the biographies of Winslow Homer and John Singer Sargent at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1) were particular catalysts for our action. We sought to reckon with the failures of museums and curatorial practices to present full, dimensional gay and queer lives in the visual arts. We called for more expansive interpretive frameworks to foster a more inclusive and honest understanding of our cultural heritage.

Curious Matter adopted the provisional name Erasure Gallery during August, the month in which Jersey City celebrates Pride. We invited institutions within our local community to consider these concerns and share our program with their members. We were honored when the Museum of Jersey City History chose to install a parallel exhibition of Erasure Gallery and host a public conversation.

We have decided to continue this temporary renaming as an annual practice. For 2026, our approach has been shaped by the gallery's year-long inquiry, On Books: The form, flow, and force of books.

As we considered this year's exhibition, we turned first to our own library. We pulled from our shelves and stacks as many books by and about gay and queer lives as we could find. We began sorting them thematically. Queer art histories occupied one of the largest groupings. The AIDS crisis appeared again and again. Throughout the process, books by and about David Wojnarowicz emerged as a significant and recurring presence.

We did not set out to make an exhibition about David Wojnarowicz. Yet the more we looked—encountering his journals, essays, catalogues, and biography—the more his voice seemed to guide the inquiry. As an artist, writer, and activist, Wojnarowicz occupies a singular position at the intersection of many of the questions that first inspired Erasure Gallery and continue to animate our On Books inquiry. His work moves fluidly between visual art and literature. It bears witness to the AIDS crisis and to the conditions of gay life in late twentieth-century America. It has also repeatedly been subjected to suppression, censorship, and institutional retreat.

The assaults on the full expression of Wojnarowicz's work are well documented. From the controversy surrounding the catalogue accompanying Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing (2) to the removal of his film A Fire in My Belly from Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture (3), his work has frequently become the object of fear, misunderstanding, and hostility toward gay and queer lives. Yet these confrontations are not the reason his books occupy such a significant place in our library.

We do not return to David Wojnarowicz because his work was accused of obscenity. We do not read him because funding was rescinded or exhibitions became sites of political conflict. While these struggles remain central to understanding the mechanisms of cultural erasure, they are not what continues to draw us to his work. We return to David because of the work itself—its honesty, urgency, anger, and refusal of silence; its capacity to hold friendship, desire, and love amid extraordinary loss. We return to it because it continues to articulate truths about our lives and because it still possesses the ability to move us deeply.

Rather than presenting another account of censorship and litigation, Erasure Gallery 2026 turns toward the artist and the work itself. In addition to presenting books and ephemera within the gallery, we offer our personal reflections on finding, reading, and returning to the work of David Wojnarowicz.

Raymond first encountered his work on the streets of downtown Manhattan. He did not yet know the artist by name, but the burning house stencil was somehow shocking and seemed to transcend the graffiti imagery he was accustomed to seeing as a young art student in early-1980s New York.

Arthur encountered Wojnarowicz through Tongues of Flame, the catalogue accompanying the artist's 1990 exhibition at Illinois State University. Living in Philadelphia in the early 1990s, recently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and feeling increasingly removed from his aspirations as an artist, he happened upon the book in a bookstore and found himself returning to it again and again.

For both Raymond and Arthur, their first encounters with David's work began with his imagery and the sense that something unfamiliar and significant had been discovered.

Later, reading Close to the Knives felt like a blast of recognition for Raymond. The book gave language to aspects of his own coming of age, a period marked by few rituals or guides for young queer people exploring sexuality. We made our way through experience, often at the margins and outside our known social circles. Encountering parallel experiences in David's writing was nearly as revelatory as living them. Close to the Knives did not shy away from predatory adults, hostility, or violence. Yet it was not simply the documentary aspects of David's writing that proved so compelling. It was also the artist at work—his prose, his looking, and the unflinching way he processed and translated lived queer experience into art.

For Arthur, the revelation took another form. The work seemed visually fresh and exciting. He was captivated by the way Wojnarowicz grouped multiple images, creating meaning through juxtaposition rather than through a single picture. Reading more about the artist's life proved equally consequential. His ability to rise from homelessness and profound precarity to become one of the most significant artists of his generation was inspiring, as was his resolute pride in his gayness. Wojnarowicz became not only an admired artist, but also a figure whose example suggested that another life and another artistic future might still be possible.

Erasure Gallery 2026 x On Books will continue through July and August. Our year-long inquiry into the form, flow, and force of books has taken shape in dialogue with our visitors. To aid the ongoing conversation around David Wojnarowicz, we have assembled a reading list and resource guide that extends beyond our own idiosyncratic collection and recollections to include information regarding his papers, journals, photographs, and other objects and artifacts.

Tongues of Flame by David Wojnarowicz, exhibition catalog published 1990, University Galleries of Illinois State University with spread showing The Weight of the Earth Part I.

Obituary clipping for David Wojnarowicz, from Au Courant, August 10, 1992.

Raymond E. Mingst | Arthur Bruso

© 2026 Curious Matter used by permission

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Notes:

1. The exhibition Winslow Homer: Crosscurrents was presented April 11–July 31, 2022; Sargent and Paris was on view April 27-August 3, 2025, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

2. Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing, curated by Nan Goldin, at Artists Space in New York City, November 16, 1989–January 6, 1990,

3. Hide/Seek: Difference and Desire in American Portraiture co-curated by Jonathan Katz and David C. Ward, Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., October 30, 2010– February 13, 2011

EXHIBITION NOTICE & FAIR USE STATEMENT

This installation features historical newspaper clippings, books, publication covers, and archival ephemera by and about David Wojnarowicz. These materials are presented for non-commercial educational, critical, and interpretive purposes.

The materials are included to contextualize and examine Wojnarowicz's artistic contributions, the history of anti-queer censorship, and the cultural erasure of LGBTQ+ narratives.

This presentation is intended to constitute Fair Use under Section 107 of the United States Copyright Act. All copyrights, trademarks, and intellectual property rights in the original materials remain with their respective creators, publishers, estates, and rights holders. The inclusion of these materials does not imply endorsement by or affiliation with the rights holders.

Æther

Constructions & Photograms by Arthur Bruso

Curious Matter

June 22 - August 10, 2008

In conversation with Arthur Bruso

by Raymond E. Mingst

REM: The collection of work in your new show ÆTHER is comprised of photograms as well as small box constructions with titles such as Pulsar, Dark Matter and Wormhole. Would you tell me about the science of the exhibit?

AB: A pulsar is a star that sends out bursts of energy at regular intervals. In my box, I use white beads to show this. Dark matter is a theoretical idea used to explain missing matter in the universe that shows up in mathematical calculations, but doesn’t seem present in the universe we observe. I’ve used a tangle of wire to stand in for this missing element. Wormhole is another theoretical phenomenon used in discussions related to time in the universe. It is supposed to be a connection between one part of space and another or one universe and another. My wormhole is a tube that connects a blue universe with a black universe. The tube ends in a ball on each side to offer a visual termination. The boxes are my interpretation of phenomenons that occur in space. The workings of space and the universe have fascinated me for ages. All this stuff is going on a scale that I find almost unimaginable, on a time scale that is incomprehensible to me. In my photographic series, Into the Magic Space, I touched on many of the same ideas of space and the universe in a more conceptual way. With the boxes I am being slightly more descriptive.

REM: You mentioned some of the materials you use, beads, tangled wire. You’ve also used spent tape spools, old rubber balls–can you tell me about your approach to materials?

AB: Starting as a child, and continuing, I have been fascinated with odd bits of stuff. I would collect this stuff in jars for some future use (I was always making things.) For awhile, I thought that the jars would be the works of art, but some convergence of the gods and the stars has had me looking at the jars of stuff this year and putting them together in boxes. Basically, I look at the stuff I have, usually a jar at a time; I may lay the contents out or peer through the glass sides of the jar, and associations come to mind. (I like to say the objects speak to me.) A spool of black electrician’s tape reminds me of a black hole, a graduated string of beads looks like an increasing or lessening signal. Then I see what I have that may enlarge on an idea and make it communicate better. Some objects are insistent, while others are silent; some need to be in the presence of others to have a voice. Once I have the subject of the box, I select a container or build it and figure out how to engineer the objects so that they will stay in place. I have to design backgrounds and consider the outside in keeping with my original idea.

REM: What are some of the things you made as a child?

AB: As a child I drew a lot. I was fond of drawing monsters. I would create elaborate stories of interplanetary space travel with my brother, and we would illustrate each story. Often the planet itself would turn out to be a giant monster. My brother and I had these toys that enabled you to make rubber things: dragons, shrunken heads, flowers or insects. We also cast things in wax, like soldiers or animals and later we began embedding things in acrylic plastic. I would often nail some bit of wire or metal to a piece of wood and call it an abstract sculpture. I pressed flowers, made plaster casts, mounted butterflies and created rock and fossil collections. I was also making utilitarian things out of wood. I don’t think any of those things exist any more, since the recipient (my mother) didn’t really appreciate my less than skilled results.

REM: Your rubber toys appear in your photograms, like the boxes they suggest a fantastical science and put in mind the cyanotypes of Anna Atkins. Are there particular artists you had in mind when you were creating these works?

AB: I was first made aware of the photogram process at a summer science program my mother had enrolled my brother and I in. I don’t remember how old we were, but I wasn’t in junior high school yet. We made blueprint (cyanotype) images of leaves. The instructor didn’t use the term photogram or cyanotype, so I didn’t connect the process with the terminology until college. In my photography 101 class I learned the term photogram, but I hadn’t yet learned about the artists associated with it. Although I believe my instructor had Man Ray in mind. So in actuality, I can’t say a particular artist influenced my photograms. I really became enamored with the process and used objects that reflected my interests. Besides the rubber toys, I explored broken glass, spilled water, waxed paper and all sorts of transparent objects.

REM: This brings up something I find intriguing–you are constantly revisiting and reconsidering your work. Into The Magic Space is comprised of photos you took that go back to your boyhood. Those images became the basis of that series. For ÆTHER, in your box constructions, you’re using toys and objects you’ve collected over many years and you’re also revisiting photograms you created in–was it your first photography class? Can you talk to me about mining your past work, what motivates you to revisit a body of work?

AB: Lillian Hellman talks about pentimento in relation to a person’s past. Pentimento is an art conservation term that describes the effect of oil paint becoming more transparent over time, allowing the changes the artist made to show through. Hellman uses the term to explain her way of looking back over a life and reconsidering it with the knowledge and wisdom of the present (“to see what was there for me once, what is there for me now.”) For me, my art exists in a continuum. The Into The Magic Space film may have been exposed when I was a teenager, but revisiting them after having been through BS and MFA programs and having worked as an artist for those years, as well as looking at art for all that time too, changed my approach to the images. What I thought were failures then, look new and interesting now. There was also a point in my art career when I would never have considered combining images, but new ideas are informed by new knowledge. Albert Pinkham Ryder was always repainting has paintings.

It is often not an art question that sets off my reexamination of past work. For Into the Magic Space, it was a need for my work to become smaller and more portable because of a change in my living conditions. For the photograms, it was a desire to preserve work that was deteriorating. Whatever the reason, it gets me to look at things that have been put away and thinking about them again. That’s when new ideas happen.

REM: Did the photograms inspire the box works?

AB: They were as independent from each other as one artist’s work can be. The boxes came about because of a retrospective I saw on Rauschenberg’s work. In it were exhibited some wooden boxes he constructed in the 1950’s which I was taken by. They made sense to me and I wanted to do something with the box form too. So I began thinking in earnest about how I could do boxes. I’ve been vaguely drawn to this concept for years. I had also seen a retrospective of Robert Morris a little earlier. Morris’ wiseacre conceptual pieces resonated with me so much, that I went and saw the show a second time. In my first box, I decided to combine the two artists in my idea. The result was Dictionary Box. In it I made a shrine out of an early 20th century pocket dictionary and the inscription written inside of it. I even included artificial flowers, which are often an element in old Catholic shrines of saints. I was venerating the dictionary as a relic, much the way Morris enshrined keys or documents.

REM: Honoring relics and enshrining objects is a recurring theme.

AB: I suppose it comes from my Catholic background and my interest in the cabinet of curiosities and Asian treasure boxes. I also have a love of museums. They take things out of the context of life and the world and present them in a way that focuses attention on the object. But this all goes back to church. The church was the first place I saw things set apart for veneration.

REM: Is environment important to your work, are you thinking about where the piece will be shown when you’re working?

AB: Actually no. I think of my work as being displayed outside of place. It belongs separated from the world; to be enjoyed for it’s visual pleasure and ideas.

Dark Matter; 4" w 3" h x 2 1/2" d; cloth covered wire, cloth electrician's tape, cardboard, plastic, steel, archival mat board, acrylic paint, enamel paint, copper wire, wood.

Pulsar; 5" w x 3" h x 2" d inches.aluminum, rubber, glass beads, string, museum mat board, cardboard box, steel wire, tissue paper, acrylic paint, glass.

Wormhole; 5" w x 4" h x 2" d; wood, rubber, cardboard, acrylic paint

Tentacles; photogram

Lids, photogram

Raymond Mingst and Arthur Bruso, © 2008 Curious Matter used with permission

#arthurbruso #raymondmingst #aether #exhibition #curiousmatter #quasar #darkmatter #wormhole #photogram #tentacles #lids #boxconstruction

The Head of the White Crow

Arthur Bruso; The Head of the White Crow; 2 1/2" w x 5 1/8" H x 2 5/8" d; plastic, mat board, acrylic paint, steel wire, acrylic medium; Box Construction

Its blood is the most precious Medicine upon earth,

The same has not its like in the world.

For this blood drives away all disease

In the bodies of metals,

Of men, and of beasts.

From it the Sages derive their science,

And through it they attain the Heavenly Gift,

Which is called the Philosopher's Stone,

Possessing the power of the whole world.

Nicholas Barnaud Delphinas, Book of Lambspring 1599

In this passage from The Book of Lambspring, Nicholas Delphinas is explainimg the folkloric belief that the salamander was impervious to flames. It could not die in the fire because its blood contained a precious component that would cure all ills and could regenerate body parts. The salamander with its seeming magical abilities, immunity to fire, and its ability to renew itself became a symbol of the ultimate goal of the alchemist.

How this damp, soft-bodied, little creature, which is indeed very vulnerable to heat and dryness, was perceived to possess this extraordinary ability was because of association and misunderstanding. The salamander, being amphibious, with delicate skin that needs constant damp and shade, often finds a home in logs stacked for firewood. When the log that the salamander has chosen for safety from the harsh, drying sunlight, is then tossed into the fire of the household fireplace, the creature will scurry out of the flames in desperation to escape and find other shelter. People misunderstanding the salamander’s needs and situation misinterpreted this survival behavior. They believed that the salamander was being born of the flames and therefore immune to them.

Through this belief, the salamander became a symbol of fire and the purification property of fire. Alchemists took this symbol of the salamander and applied it to their work. It became the way of referencing the Rubedo, the final stage of the creation of the Philosopher’s Stone. After the material in the alchemical furnace has been purified through the Albedo stage, called the White Bird because the material in the vessel has been distilled to its pure whiteness, it was then ready for the intense red-hot heat that would convert it into the Philosopher’s Stone. Heating the pure white material to the red-hot stage to form the Philosopher’s Stone is called the Rubedo.

This small box is my interpretation of that final stage of success where the material in the alchemical flask has crystallized out of the flame into the “nature of the salamander” or to have become unaffected to further distillation, making it ready to become the Philosopher’s Stone. The small toy salamander is hovering over reddening (pink) material at the base of the box. It is held in place by the downward pointing stopper of the flask. The flask itself is represented by a painted silhouette on the back of the box.

I had become interested in the imagery of alchemy when my partner and I began looking for a name and a logo for the gallery we were founding. The imagery of alchemy seemed fertile ground to explore because we envisioned our gallery to be a workshop of transformation, a place where artists transform their raw materials and concepts into the distilled completeness of their art. We were also interested in the concept of the Cabinet of Curiosities where all the world’s wonders were collected to be seen in one place.

In researching the imagery, I became fascinated by the allegories and symbols that surrounded the Great Work of the alchemists. It was frustrating that much of the process was obfuscated behind these dense images and obscure terminology. But this mystery was also part of the appeal. Mystery allows a broader interpretation of an idea.

I keep a growing collection of varied odd objects that I hope will find places in my art. Coming upon the small salamander among my collected objects had my mind jump immediately to the folklore of the salamander. I had made the salamander when I was a child with my Creepy Crawlers Thingmakers set. The other objects came together out of my collection because they fit the purpose of the idea as it grew from the incombustible salamander to the alchemical symbolism of the process of purification. The presence of pink in the coloration of the plastic salamander allowed the pink (or as I propose, the reddening) objects to cohere into a visual whole.

It was never my intention to practice alchemy. Despite the many treatises and books on the subject, it did not appeal to me as a practice. It was clear that for all the words and philosophy written about alchemy, it was ultimately unsuccessful at turning base matter into gold or finding the Philosopher’s Stone. These two pursuits were it highest goals. The entire system was flawed from the start because of Aristotle. He believed in the philosophy that one element could change into another. He was convinced that metals grew inside the earth like plants, maturing from base metals like lead into perfect metals like gold. It became the lasting belief and understanding of the alchemical process. This is in contradiction to the contemporary scientific understanding of the extreme geophysical and astrophysical energy necessary for the creation of elements. I was mainly interested in the surfeit of highly imaginative images that we found through our research and the allegorical interpretations that accompanied them. My interest was purely atheistic. My toy salamander was the inspiration that provided the cascade of ideas fueled by the research I had been carrying out. This confluence of objects and images converged into this piece that is a culmination of my thoughts on transmutation and an impossible goal.

A Salamander Lives in the Fire, Which Imparts to It a Most Glorious Hue.

Arthur Bruso ©2026

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