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Israeli-born, L.A.-based artist Yuval Pudik decided to only use vintage gay porn images in his solo exhibition KANADA at Cash Machine in Atwater Village, a small storefront artist-run gallery space. In this exhibition, the artist purchased old books and painstakingly wrapped them in red paper, layering a vintage porn image into each book cover. Then he cuts a peephole-like circle through the red wrapping paper, giving a sense of peering at the porn imagery as if through a bathroom stall glory hole.

The installation is both simple in its execution and towering in its presence: a giant, mountainous pile of red books with these glory-hole cuttings are situated in the middle of the gallery. The only other piece of art in this exhibition is a photocopy of the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which are written across two pieces of vertical paper and cut through the middle, creating a mirrored, two-panel form out of the text. It is hard not to consider a relationship between the pile of books in the middle, and the 12 steps that the artist has pasted onto the adjacent wall.

Is this show literally about porn addiction and powerlessness? Is this about iterations of queerness through unknown realms of time and space? Is it even relevant to read into something in a possibly “authentic,” autobiographical way, as if it is about the artist directly?
Read more at http://www.craveonline.com/art/958251-yuval-pudik-travels-queer-kanadian-time#Bd8YKFcSqrhoTFGw.99