Gayhouse

Hey all, I just completed work on an issue of GAYHOUSE, a french zine that collaborates with a different queer artist for each issue. It will debut at the NY Art Book Fair. I think it looks really beautiful. It is dedicated to three of my great, recent loves (platonic and otherwise)—Mark, Doug, and Roberto. I am excited for folks to see it. Blurb below. For more information about the project, go here.

GAYHOUSE is a graphic and visual review that invites artists to share their personal, singular and affirmative vision of gay identity— whether this vision by joyful, poetic, worried, ironic, humorous, pornographic, modest…Taking over the review is similar to inhabiting a house. The invited artist is free to select a layout, its decoration, and the guests. Ultimately, the review will present an image of his or her world.



“For the issue of GAYHOUSE, I wanted to combine colored pencil and ink drawings with photographs related to my daily life. The tensions I wanted to explore were between abstraction and representation; real and imagined; depicted and actual; whole and part; the world I yearn for and the one I move through on a daily basis. Desire is also key: the sigils are abstractions of desire, of course. The other thread of the issue is that it is very much a meditation on death, symbolized by the Aztec god of death, Mictlantecuhtlian, and an act of mourning for my friend Mark Aguhar—a young, genderqueer artist who committed suicide this past spring—who makes an appearance on the back cover. Altogether, you could say that the issue’s subject is the intertwining of desire and loss in daily life.” Elijah Burgher



Elijah Burgher (b. 1978, lives and works in Chicago) aims to contribute to the strain of countercultural queer mysticism exemplified by figures such as Jean Genet, Kenneth Anger, and Hakim Bey. His works, mostly drawings, have their sources in imagination, found stories, historical artworks, but take root into the artist’s daily life and personal history. Beside figurative drawings, where men are engaged in ritual activities, he creates sigils, magical emblems conceived after an historical method of spell casting developed by early 20th century occultist Austin Osman Spare, in which the letters spelling out a wish are combined into a new symbol. Thus he creates icons that utilize the language and history of abstraction.


Elijah Burgher’s GAYHOUSE #5 will be available on the booth of Septembre éditions at THE NY ART BOOK FAIR, 28 – 30 September, MoMA PS1, Long Island City, Queens.Signature: Saturday 29 September, 5 P.M., official book-signing table in the lobby of MoMA PS1.



About: 210 x 297 mm; 3 colors printing; 200 copies numbered and signed; each copy comes in a blue aluminum envelope with a b&w silkscreen sticker. Price: 25 € / 32 US$