Cliff Notes
Each week, our regional Cliff Notes columnists Mariah Green, Vanessa Perez Winder, Jas Keimig, and Sam Wrigglesworth pick the most exciting events and exhibitions on the West Coast.
Rafael Soldi: Soft Boy
Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA
October 7 to January 7
“Soft boy” is a term used in a lot of different contexts these days — it could mean a dude who’s in touch with his feelings or a guy who uses his feelings to manipulate those around him. Multimedia artist Rafael Soldi explores another angle to the term in his expansive solo show, Soft Boy, currently on view at the Frye Art Museum.
Pulling from his experiences and recollections growing up queer in Peru, this exhibition is composed of three different works in which Seattle-based Soldi meditates on identity, masculinity, and memory.
In the text-based “mouth to mouth,” Soldi plays with language, juxtaposing handwritten English and Spanish words with one another to highlight the mutability of meaning. The second piece, CARGAMONTÓN, is a print series that draws its name from a sometimes violent Latin American schoolyard pile-on game. Soldi took stills from grainy footage he found of the game online and translated it into large-scale etchings, underlining cargamontón’s brutality but also its physical intimacy.
The exhibition’s centerpiece is Soft Boy, a three-channel video installation that immerses the viewer into an adolescent scene. A group of boys in school uniforms roughhouse with one another, wrestling, fighting, and trying to impress one another. It can be disconcerting — there’s an inherent tension to these kids’ games, but also a yearning for connection. Soft Boy speaks to the part of growing up that’s fragile, tender, and unexplored.
Reflection: What teenage games or rituals both frightened and excited you?
KSRA’s Existed
Gallery Ergo, Seattle, WA
Through January 11
Memories are fickle. The passage of time distorts what we remember and how we remember being.
And as Seattle edges more into tech bro dystopia it’s easy to forget things we’d see on our walks to work or the facades of places we’d drink, dine, and rest. In Existed, which is up at Gallery Ergo into the New Year, KSRA makes that distortion of time literal in sculptures of iconic signs from Seattle businesses that are no more, twisted into the past.
Featured in the show is the vintage sign from the old and now gone Randy’s Restaurant on East Marginal Way South, trippingly distorted as if seen through a mirage. There’s also the sign from the defunct drive thru dry cleaning spot on E Olive Way, which KSRA depicts with dirt, graffiti, and literally warped by the passage of time. Rather than boring new builds with sleek, place-less global corporate chains, Seattle used to have a broader patchwork of businesses and buildings that made up our refreshingly incongruous cityscape. In Existed, KSRA’s miniature renditions pays tribute to the Seattle of years past and serve as a reminder of how vibrant our city used to be.
Reflection: What parts of your city do you miss seeing everyday?