Strings Attached: Queering Proximities
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles proudly celebrates Pride Month as a time for community, dialogue, and creative exchange. In this spirit, the gallery is pleased to present Strings Attached: Queering Proximities an intimate group exhibition exploring queer strategies through the works of multidisciplinary artists Amy Adler, John Brooks, Josh Cabello, Pui Tiffany Chow, Zackary Drucker, Rubén Esparza, Ken Gonzales-Day, Jonathan VanDyke, and Jwan Yosef. The exhibition is on view in the gallery’s project room from June 14 – July 19, 2025.
Strings Attached: Queering Proximities celebrates the diverse perspectives of artists engaging in multidisciplinary queer strategies that expand on themes of relationality, empathy, intimacy, representation, subversion, and the queer sublime. The works on view exemplify intimate research practices that are deeply embedded both within and beyond their material forms—drawing connections from life, events, histories, popular imagery, and personal experiences. Spanning painting, drawing, photography, textiles, assemblage, and poetry, the exhibition invites us to consider how queer embodiments and affective ties—material and metaphorical—generate new frameworks for belonging, care, and resistance in a time of social fragmentation.
Amy Adler works across the disciplines of drawing, performance, photography, and film. Her practice explores media and processes considering subjects that exist between paradigms and identities. The study from Adler’s “Nice Girl” series examines the ubiquitous social media mirror selfie, exploring the complex social dynamics of how self-image is constructed, disseminated, and construed.
John Brooks is a visual artist and poet who explores themes of identity, memory, death, and place while considering questions of contemplation, the expression of emotion, the transformative power and emotional resonance of particular experiences—and what Max Beckmann described as “the deepest feeling about the mystery of being."
Josh Cabello focuses on creating queer sanctuaries. He paints lush, imagined gardens, conjuring a world where anyone who enters can be still, commune with oneself, and be engulfed by nature. Each piece serves as a portal for the viewer to explore the human interior.
Pui Tiffany Chow uses pointed art historical references to examine the female form and the capacity for the canvas to stage them. Her work explores the intersection between abstraction and figuration, interrogates painting traditions in both subject and form, referencing Eastern and Western cultural codes and modes that coalesce into a pastiche of different tempos, feelings and approaches.
Zackary Drucker is an interdisciplinary artist, cultural producer, and trans woman who breaks down the way we think about gender, sexuality, and seeing. As a filmmaker in documentaries, television, and film, she has directed and produced several notable projects, including The Stroll, Queenmaker: The Making of an It Girl, and Enigma, as well as her work on the HBO docuseries The Lady and the Dale and the Amazon original series Transparent.
Rubén Esparza is a multidisciplinary artist and independent curator. He effectively combines his insights from both roles to create intensely cross-referential physical and temporary works of art and exhibitions. His work explores Queer and Latinx histories, existential trauma, and the reconciliation of his heritage, examining the dynamic between the colonizer and the colonized within and in dialogue with the Western art canon. He has extensive studies in art, design, and art history.
Ken Gonzales-Day’s interdisciplinary and conceptually grounded photographic projects consider the history of photography, the construction of race, and the limits of representational systems. His “Sharing Space” series of portraits contemplates visibility, presentation, and perception while celebrating the beauty and resilience of diverse creative communities in Los Angeles.
Jonathan VanDyke is a visual artist working at the intersection of painting and performance, with an emphasis on a queer, collaborative, and embodied practice. His sewn paintings emerge through complex and prolonged processes of accumulating, mark-making, and piecing from personal experiences.
Jwan Yosef is a conceptual painter who deconstructs materials, language, and figuration. Through an examination of representational imagery—spanning personal and familial photographs, sports stills, and publicity images of public figures—Yosef exposes the evolving constructions of identity and belonging.