Doug Ischar
Doug Ischar is a multi-media artist whose work revolves around themes of masculinity, desire, and voyeurism. He generated several series of photographs in the late 1980s focused on the queer scene at the height of the AIDS crisis—documenting the urban beach called Belmont Rocks in Chicago and a leather bar in San Francisco, among other scenes. His work became more minimal in the 1990s, shifting to video and sound installations that addressed the nuances and subtle complexities of sexuality and desire. He shifted to linear video in 2007 and generated several short films that reveal the fluidity of public sexuality and addressed the subjectivity of the spectator. Ischar’s practice situates “practical and visual boundaries for definitions of masculinity, sexuality, violence, and secrecy” at the foreground.
Ischar has exhibited at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Museo de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Malmo Konst Museet, Sweden, The Camera Club of New York, New York, Harn Museum, Gainsborough, Florida, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, among others. Several of his films were featured in the 2014 Whitney …
Doug Ischar is a multi-media artist whose work revolves around themes of masculinity, desire, and voyeurism. He generated several series of photographs in the late 1980s focused on the queer scene at the height of the AIDS crisis—documenting the urban beach called Belmont Rocks in Chicago and a leather bar in San Francisco, among other scenes. His work became more minimal in the 1990s, shifting to video and sound installations that addressed the nuances and subtle complexities of sexuality and desire. He shifted to linear video in 2007 and generated several short films that reveal the fluidity of public sexuality and addressed the subjectivity of the spectator. Ischar’s practice situates “practical and visual boundaries for definitions of masculinity, sexuality, violence, and secrecy” at the foreground.
Ischar has exhibited at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio, List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Museo de Arte Moderna, Sao Paulo, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, Hyde Park Art Center, Chicago, Malmo Konst Museet, Sweden, The Camera Club of New York, New York, Harn Museum, Gainsborough, Florida, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa, and the Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase, New York, among others. Several of his films were featured in the 2014 Whitney Biennial.
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois
Malmo Konstmuseet, Malmo, Sweden
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas
Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, Illinois
Golden Gallery, New York, New York and Chicago, Illinois