Capsule is pleased to announce its first participation in NADA New York with “Male Fantasies”, a solo project by Douglas Rieger (b. 1984, Pittsburgh, USA). The artist stages a confrontation with a massive sculpture, both menacing and seductive, supplemented by wall works that further probe the nature of the encounter—evoking the mechanical and corporeal, the sensual and unknown. The resulting installation creates a symbiotic environment where rigidity and vulnerability coexist, and where body and machine are reimagined for the present moment.
The central sculpture is amassed through the interplay between dynamic aluminum armature, dramatic, hand-carved wood tear drop spears, and surprising elements like aluminum lipsticks and cascading bead chain, plugged and draped with rubber stoppers and gaskets peppering the form. There is a logic of piercing, slotting, plugging—undeniably libidinal. The rhythmic network of welded aluminum pipe creates an enclosed corporeal system, cascading downwards toward a jagged plasma cut array reminiscent of a claw foot, comb, or combine harvester. The body of Rieger’s sculpture is laid bare, skeletal. It is as if he polished and adorned a relic of industry, transmuting it into a strange object of power and agency. Having grown up in Pittsburgh, the son of a coal miner, Rieger is no stranger to the ravages of the industrial and the decay of infrastructure. Despite the machinic element of the works, Rieger’s hand is palpable throughout. Purple pigment mixed with shellac creates an iridescent, tactile sheen on the carved wood spears that taper to dramatically sharpened tips. There is a heft and brutal urgency to Rieger’s fabrication that surprisingly exudes a sense of fragility and play.
Titling his sculpture Male Fantasies after the book by Klaus Theweleit, Rieger engages the idea of psychic body armor in the wake of fascistic forces. Does armor imply a kind of vulnerable body? Or one that masquerades as armor in order to deflect hostility and danger? Armor simultaneously operates in the registers of the body builder, heavy machinery, the queer body, and the Gothic—a complex modulation of forces that give form to a body, combating a kind of ruthless brutality.
Male Fantasies is paired with wall works that echo this pairing between hard and soft, armor and flesh. Rough-edged plasma cut aluminum abuts thin cellular canvases painted inky black, sheathed in UV-resistant vinyl, creating a high-gloss, protective barrier—taut and highly reflective. The effect is akin to staring into the glassy black orbs of a many-eyed creature like a spider, not being able to reconcile how one is being perceived by so many ocular organs simultaneously. There is an ominous attraction that pulls you to these works, sizing you up as they reflect and deflect your gaze.
At its core, there is something in both the sculpture and wall works that is about our encounter with the “other”—an irrevocable discomfort and violent schism we experience in ourselves when face to face with another being, blending curiosity, fear, and arousal.
