Michael Weinstein

If you have never been to the Boom Boom Room at Green Dolphin Street on a Monday night, you might be tempted to make a foray there by Bernard Colbert's color performance portraits of JoJo and Sal-E, who strut their stuff with gay abandon at the venue. "Club kids" to the core, the two voguers are outrageous male cross-dressers who continually transform their costumes and makeup to create anti-fashion statements supplemented by their burlesqued expressions and poses. Perfect subjects for a performance photographer, Colbert enters their free-form acts in a spirit of innocent fun that can only evoke the intended laughter. Nothing can top Colbert's outsized study of JoJo standing in a billowy white gown with his legs spread-eagled, his arms open to solicit an embrace and his lips pursed in a look of lascivious avidity—feminists and hugging aunts are advised to stay away, the rest of us are free to join the zaniness.

Bernard Colbert, "Getting Into Face," shows at Gallery 203, 1579 North Milwaukee, (77)616-9943, through January 27.

(2008-01-22)

Also by Michael Weinstein

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Inviting comparison with astral formations, forests, gardens, deserts and seabeds, this exhibition of fifty intricately beautiful microscopic photographs of slices of the nervous system provides compelling evidence for the aesthetic unity of perceived nature
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"I suppose I am a heretic," David Plowden says with more than a touch of jovial irony. He is also a man who has achieved wisdom through his lifelong romance with the world through his camera
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(2007-08-07)

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