Like walking into a white cloud, not exactly diversity-heaven, but diversity dream, an alternate dream world where anything is possible.
I say white cloud because these precious, precise, hand-drawn images are placed in vast vacant spaces of cream paper—a lot of light and space around these extraordinary drawings, even more so hanging in this white and bright gallery space. With the background context blanked out, there's nothing to do but contemplate the particulars carried on the face, on the body of the subject. A picture says a thousand words goes the adage. This is just how it feels when you are a man in a dress. "All anybody notices is my nails," says my tranny friend.
I say extraordinary drawings because Solo's subjects are more-than-ordinary, meaning not-commonplace as well as extra special. That they are sometimes (always?) composite portraits first composed of diverse elements on the computer before rendered in fine-line pencil is just part of the story. The other part is the singular, unconventional, gender-variant embodiment and presentation that certain individuals carry—sometimes secretly, sometimes out loud.
Solo's portraits point to the tension inherent in being out of the ordinary. This is What's Your Secret?, 2008, graphite & cut paper. Perhaps if you look closely you'll see the string which ties these genitals to the ring.
And then, like this, he points, reflexively, to the mixed reception cross or mixed gender presentation can get. This is stoggaF, 2008, graphite & cut paper.
Like the title of the boy-in-dress drawing above, I Keep Trying, Solo keeps trying to put the pieces together, like a puzzle, working out the equation to explain himself/herself/the self that is sometimes disjointed by one person's definition, but is always unique and deserving of a place in the universe.
In the alternate reality of his universe, there's a lot of mixing and matching, but unlike your usual cut and paste collage, in these drawings, it is hard to determine where one thing begins and another leaves off. The result, though, is quietly disarming. The subjects, composite or not, are exposed in an intimacy so rarely seen—and as you take in these signifiers of precarious difference, you notice, they stare, blankly, back at you. What are you going to make of it? Very powerful, very fine work.
