CCS BARD

Doug Ischar projects electronically reproduced images onto photographs, objects, and walls, as well as using standard video monitors. The images, most often culled from popular culture, include photographs of political leaders (i.e., Che Guevara, Mao), vintage gay porn, clips from grade-B movies, and other sources. Ischar alters the original implications of these materials by viewing them in a gay context, releasing a libidinous energy. His installations take place in semi-dark rooms that call up associations of intimate, erotic, or illicit transactions. Ischar’s installation skirts the margins of narrative but rejects the coherence and closure of traditional narrative forms. Instead, he offers fleeting insights into the banal and ephemeral materials of everyday life, the inconclusive evidences of the transitory pleasures of looking in.