Pool Boys
Jacsen Callahan and Nico Amador
Ace Lehner
Checking Out Original Plumbing: Considering the political, social and aesthetic relevance of the most popular Trans Male Quarterly in the U.S.
In this work I consider the significance of Original Plumbing and the potential O.P. holds within the contemporary climate of QUILTBAG rights and issues about visibility and representation. I am particularly interested in how Original Plumbing might function as an intervention into the binary gender system, how race and class are presented within the quarterly and how the project navigates the ever present issue of producing representations of subjects who are largely visually marginalized as a group and how O.P. functions as a space of community creation beyond the trans-male community. To situate Original Plumbing within a contemporary context I will also discuss a few other recent scenarios of political social and aesthetic relevance.
Biography
Ace Lehner is an artist and visual culture scholar exploring the presentation of queer and otherwise representationally marginalized subjects in contemporary visual art and culture. Lehner is particularly interested in portrait photography and video projects that open up space for considering the ways in which ideologies are inherent in the act of looking. Lehner often works in photography and embraces collaboration as a form of artistic production. Lehner is part of the artist collective ERNEST. Lehner has exhibited, given talks and taught throughout North America. Lehner’s work is held in several private collections. In 2009 Lehner was a recipient of the Murphy and Cadogan fellowship in Fine Arts. Lehner holds an MA | MFA from California College of the Arts and a BFA with a minor in Social Anthropology from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada.
Currently, Lehner is a PhD Student in Visual Studies at the University of California at Santa Cruz.