COOPER COLE

Paul P. and G.B. Jones | Tough Stuff

September 16, 2020

Artists G.B. Jones and Paul P. have been making collaborative works on and off for nearly two decades, many of which were published in the book A Queer Anthology of Rage. The artists and friends primarily work in collage, pulling from their combined image banks and visualizing their ongoing dialogues.

Through these collages, the artists use the process of cut-and-paste to inquire into queer aesthetics of coding and innuendo. The duo are interested in ungovernable sexualities and genders and visual languages that reflect them. By searching, selecting, and recontextualizing found images together, Jones and P. visualize histories of queer communication and identification. In 2018, P. wrote an insightful essay (link) about Jones’ practice for Canadian Art Magazine that illustrates the depth of the artists’ connection and admiration for each others work.

In conjunction with their collaborative exhibition Temple of Friendship at Cooper Cole, G.B. Jones and Paul P. will be releasing a limited edition zine entitled Tough Stuff. The zine will be available at Cooper Cole in a print run of 200.

Tough Stuff continues Jones and P.’s collective inquiry into ungovernable sexualities and genders, as well as the histories of aesthetics forged by those who were compelled to communicate and represent themselves through innuendo and codes. Devoted to the act of archiving as both a tool and a creative conceit, they have, over the past 18 years, assembled an oeuvre of collaborative cut-and- paste collages from their copious image banks. This zine is filled with colour images of collaborative collages that dwell on the queer lineage of coded language in aesthetics and attitudes.

G.B. Jones (b. 1965 Bowmanville, Ontario, Canada) has acquired international acclaim for her super-8 films, zines, and proto-Riot Grrrl band Fifth Column. Active since the early 1980s, her works are milestones in independent film, publishing, and art rock, respectively, and primary sources for what later became known as Queercore. Concurrently, Jones has always been a dedicated visual artist best known for all-female reprises of Tom of Finland’s drawings. By a simple twist, hers are images of liberation freed of the fascist tendencies at work in gay male culture. Her solo exhibitions include Cooper Cole, Toronto, 2018; Tom Of Finland, G.B. Jones, Daniel Buchholz, Cologne, 1993; Feature, New York, 1991. Her work has been included in numerous group exhibitions including: Art After Stonewall, Grey Art Gallery and Leslie-Lohman Museum, New York, 2019; Coming to Power: 25 Years of Sexually X-Plicit Art by Women, Maccarone, New York, 2016; This Will Have Been: Art, Love and Politics in the 1990s, Museum of Contemporary Art, 2012; Coming To Power: 25 Years Of Sexually X-plicit Art By Women, David Zwirner, New York, curated by Ellen Kantor, 1993. Jones lives and works in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

Paul P. (b. 1977, Canada), who first came to attention in the early 2000s, has developed a wide-ranging practice centered on a series of drawings and paintings of young men appropriated from pre-AIDS gay erotica. His solo exhibitions include Morena di Luna/Maureen Paley, Hove, UK (2020); Queer Thoughts, New York, USA (2019); Lulu, Mexico City, Mexico (2019); Scrap Metal, Toronto, Canada (2015); and The Power Plant, Toronto, Canada (2007). His group exhibitions include Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2014); Les paris sont ouverts, Freud Museum, London (2011); and Compass in Hand, Museum of Modern Art, New York (2009). P.’s work is in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, the Museum of Modern Art New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Hammer Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Whitney Museum, among others.

To download a PDF copy of Tough Stuff, please click here.

For more information about G.B. Jones and Paul P. please contact the gallery:

info@coopercolegallery.com

+1.416.531.8000

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-advertisement	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Advertisement".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	1 year	This cookies is set by GDPR Cookie Consent WordPress Plugin. The cookie is used to remember the user consent for the cookies under the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	1 year	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".

Cookie	Duration	Description
_ga	2 years	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to calculate visitor, session, campaign data and keep track of site usage for the site's analytics report. The cookies store information anonymously and assign a randomly generated number to identify unique visitors.
_gid	1 day	This cookie is installed by Google Analytics. The cookie is used to store information of how visitors use a website and helps in creating an analytics report of how the wbsite is doing. The data collected including the number visitors, the source where they have come from, and the pages viisted in an anonymous form.

Cookie	Duration	Description
IDE	1 year 24 days	Used by Google DoubleClick and stores information about how the user uses the website and any other advertisement before visiting the website. This is used to present users with ads that are relevant to them according to the user profile.
test_cookie	15 minutes	This cookie is set by doubleclick.net. The purpose of the cookie is to determine if the user's browser supports cookies.
VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE	5 months 27 days	This cookie is set by Youtube. Used to track the information of the embedded YouTube videos on a website.

Cookie	Duration	Description
CONSENT	16 years 9 months 23 days 2 hours	No description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	1 year	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	1 year	No description
_gat_gtag_UA_135534658_1	1 minute	No description