Yellow No. 5, Bruh
Eli Thorne

April 29 – May 28, 2016

Exhibition Dates: April 29 - May 28, 2016
Opening Reception: Friday, April 29, 7:00 -10:00pm
Special Event: Saturday, May 21, 6:00 – 8:00pm
Other Bodies - Conversations about Queerness, Gender, and Identity (featuring artists and poets including Andrea Abi-Karam, Shiloh Jines, Nora McKinnon, Eli Thorne, Leila Weefur, and others TBA)
Gallery Hours: Saturday + Sunday 1:00 - 4:00pm

Eli Thorne’s work explores athleticism and sports culture, as well as visible displays of maleness through sculptural forms. As a trans male, Thorne aims to reconcile and negotiate his own sense of masculinity and relationship to today’s hyper-macho culture by investigating the aesthetics of sexuality, manhood, aspiration, and transformation. In doing so, his work delves into issues of societal pressure, aggression, and the toxic intersection of the feasible and the fantastical.  

In Thorne’s exhibition Yellow No. 5, Bruh at Royal NoneSuch Gallery, disparate and rough hewn “masculine” materials are forced together in a sculptural hodgepodge to create obtrusive, floor-to-ceiling forms rooted in the aesthetics of construction, home gyms, and the pseudo-practical; taking a critical look at toxic jock identity, queerness, caffeine and male entitlement.

Artist Bio
Eli Thorne is an Oakland based hybrid artist born in Harrogate, England and raised in Santa Cruz, California. He received his BFA from UC Berkeley, and his MFA from Mills College. His work has shown in a variety of Bay Area and international spaces including Incline Gallery, Southern Exposure, SOMArts, Worth Ryder Gallery, Mills College Art Museum, Queer Prophecies Film Festival (Montreal, Quebec), and Ravnedans Festival (Kristiansand, Norway).