David Richard Gallery is pleased to announce Ed Shostak / Rose Royale: A Queer Perspective From Postminimalism to Social Practice, Selected Works: 1963 – 2020, an exhibition curated by Isaac Aden and David Eichholtz. This is the gallery’s first major exhibition for the artist Ed Shostak who passed away in April 2020 from the Covid-19 virus.  It is unusual to uncover an artist of his pedigree for which so little is publicly known after establishing himself amidst the visual arts most notable institutions, Shostak cloistered himself in his downtown loft relentlessly working and opting for a less mainstream practice. This exhibition is the first look at many of his late works.

For those who are interested in reconsidering the parallel arcs of art history, examining and expanding the boundaries of the established canon of Post War art, Shostak’s work will be a revelation. His work addressed so many of the known formal and conceptual concerns from that period, but through a queer lens. Eventually, he abandoned convention, favoring a more expansive view of the possibilities that an artist’s practice could include by embracing a queer social practice and advocacy for the transgender community.

This presentation is not a retrospective of his artwork, but is comprised of completed sculptural works, drawings, studies, performance, documentary images and films to illustrate and map two key aspects and threads of continuity throughout Ed Shostak’s artistic career and life. While the imagery may have changed over the decades, the exhibition is organized to map these threads regardless of the subject matter, form or media. In fact, it becomes apparent that his personal life and art practice were inextricable—one and the same—and ultimately, the artist became both the subject and the art. Shostak had gone full circle from his childhood performances in the family living room to navigating the art world as a gay man and then to activism and politics to become not only his alter ego, but to be himself—transgender.

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