Becoming Hole

Todd Stong

June 13 - July 27, 2024

Opening Reception: Thursday, June 13 | 6-9 pm

Open Saturdays from 12-5pm or by appointment

Peep is pleased to present Becoming Hole, the first Philadelphia solo exhibition of artist Todd Stong. Working in figuration across extremes of scale, in intimate graphite drawings and monumental, scenic monotypes, Stong elaborates on processes of queer cultural production that vibrate between the world-building capacities of visionary individuals and the polymorphic tangle of the crowd.

In his largest multi-panel monotype work to date (sized to fit onto Peep’s brick wall specifically) titled The Johann Joachim Winckelmann Sculpture Park (Murder and Executions), Stong sets a hoard of over 200 bulbous men and butterfly-winged angels on a massive undertaking. Simultaneously landscaping, sculpting, building, massaging, wrecking, sneaking, eating, dying, shitting, loving, drawing, and daydreaming, the cast of characters engage in the construction of a snow-sculpture park dedicated to Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), considered by many the founder of art history—a man forgotten to most except art historians, and even to them, mostly a footnote. This complex, monumental multi-panel monotype is full of historical facts alongside Stong’s own speculative narratives and easter eggs pointing to auto-biographical stories.

Alongside the monumental monotype, 20 small drawings (nineteen in the gallery and one downstairs at Second State Press) flick between wide shot and macro, developing themes and metaphors of the larger work related to disease, pleasure, and the contemporary condition, queer and otherwise. Images of tiger attacks, snakes emerging from anuses, and skeletons and angels engaging in sex acts all work in tandem to examine the cognitive dissonance of ecstatic pleasure during an age of mass death and genocide. All the while, attention turns to the stuff of the ground, spiders and ants and twigs, and pebbles, the constant crackle at our feet. There, holes punctuate and puncture, shifting meaning and context from piece to piece. Whether bullet holes, ant nests, drainage pipes, orifices, portals, or false depths, they are harbingers of the unknown, peered into by men, cats, and skeletons alike, places of both potential and obliteration. They hint at the shallowness of human perception, the thinness of our understanding. They ask what it means to live on false pretense, to participate in a culture that misapprehends its own queer origins, scaffolded upon assumption and fantasy.

An extended Press Release describing the historical significance of Winckelmann’s life is available to read at the gallery and on online.

Coinciding with Peep's exhibit, Todd Stong also has a display of monotypes and drawings in the downstairs hallways of Second State Press, where he was a CRE Fellow. Check out both shows during your visit! 

The Muddy Thoroughfare of Life, Death, and Art in Todd Stong’s “Becoming Hole” at Peep Projects, Artblog, Lane Timothy Speidel, July 19, 2024

Art Spiel Picks: Philly Exhibitions in July 2024, Art Speil, Claire Haik, July 15, 2024