P·P·O·W is pleased to present Talking to Strangers, Anthony Iacono’s second solo exhibition with the gallery. Iacono’s practice has included sculpture, photography, video, artist books, and collages. Talking to Strangers will feature a series of Iacono’s highly controlled painted collage works, as well as a new series of collage works executed in monochromatic ink.

Each work is composed of painted paper that is cut and then assembled like parquetry, with each intricately cut fragment interlocking into the whole. This technical virtuosity and the emotional resonance of each scene exists alongside art historical rigor. We might recall the collages of Hannah Höch or John Heartfield, or Man Ray’s still lives—all of which mobilize estrangement as a revolutionary enterprise. Iacono extends this queer engagement with the avant-garde into the history of design, especially Art Deco, with his combination of chromatic excess with precise, yet flamboyant, geometric forms. We arrive at a queer time, one in which all artistic references are available for reformulation, citation, and dissolution in the service of expanding the representational outlets available to desire.