Artist Brendan Fernandes has been having conversations about ballet and mastery within his work for years. The call and response interaction focuses on the idea that ballet is tied to the process of perfection. It can be difficult for ballet dancers to let go and let loose. It’s endurance, labor, and an intense effort for the body to stretch, hold, and pose. The body is challenged to push through any sort of pain to gain a reward. Ballet demands the body to do more, to be better. Fernandes finds the kinds of demands in another of his interests—BDSM. Dance and BDSM derive from the same formula: discipline, rigor, and authority.
It’s interesting then that Fernandes’s work in “Restrain,” now at Monique Meloche Gallery, eliminates the physical body—absent of dancers, what’s left behind are bronze rope sculptures seemingly wrapped around an invisible figure. Hanging on walnut structures, the pieces encapsulate an emptiness and form a shape with no clear molding. The artist contours the body into the shape of Shibari, often called kinbaku or rope bondage. This technique originated from martial arts in Japan and uses a fiber rope that wraps into several patterns around a person to, well, restrain them. “My choice to remove the body in this work is mainly to instill a sense of fragility but also to find strength,” he says. “By making the body one that is not identified to one type of person, it can be read by all. I aim to find solidarity for all and in that I define ‘queer’ as an open moniker for self-inclusion. The missing body is a space for all to see themselves in and to find empowerment.”
Through 1/11, gallery hours Tue-Sat 11 AM-6 PM, Mon-Sun closed, Monique Meloche Gallery, 451 N. Paulina, moniquemeloche.com, free.
