HUGH STEERS 2017 with Sam McKinniss, Bryson Rand & Ursula Davila-Villa

Visual AIDS hosts a discussion during the New York Art Book Fair with painter Sam McKinniss, photographer Bryson Rand and art historian Ursula Davila-Villa, highlighting the contemporary influence of painter Hugh Steers on a younger generation of artists and creatives. Hugh Steers: The Complete Paintings, published by Visual AIDS, is the first monograph focused on the career of American figurative painter Hugh Steers (1962–1995), whose life was cut short by AIDS at the age of 32. Unique among painters, Steers consciously brought AIDS, intimacy, and the body into the traditional vocabulary of painting, and his figurative painting style continues to speak to political and personal issues around HIV/AIDS, healthcare, and sexuality. This beautiful hardcover monograph features over 600 full-color images of Steers’ paintings and includes a foreword by Dale Peck and essays by Cynthia Carr and James Smalls, along with a complete exhibition history and bibliography.

Ursula Davila-Villa is a Partner at the gallery Alexander Gray Associates in New York, where she oversees programing, publications, and artists and institutional relations, including that on the work Hugh Steers, whose estate is represented by Alexander Gray Associates. She previously worked as Associate Curator of Latin American Art the Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas, where she curated and organized exhibitions and programs, including Waltercio Caldas (2012); Trienal Poli/Gráfica de San Juan (2012), Recovering Beauty: the 1990s in Buenos Aires (2011); and The New York Graphics Workshop (2008), among others. Prior to her work at the Blanton Museum, she held positions at the Cai Guo-Qiang studio, Galeria OMR, Mexico City; the Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Art in General, New York.

Sam McKinniss is an artist in New York. He is primarily recognized as a painter focusing on portraiture and figuration, using appropriated source material to explore a wide range of pictorial, emotional, or romantic themes. Both McKinniss and Steers have cited modern American Regionalism as a stylistic influence. Recently, his work has been on view in solo or group shows in New York at Team (gallery), Half Gallery, and JTT Gallery, as well as at John Berggruen Gallery in San Francisco. McKinniss is currently preparing a solo exhibition to be mounted in January, 2018, at Team (bungalow) in Los Angeles. www.sammckinniss.com

Bryson Rand is an artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. Bryson's photographs of Queer-centric spaces and gay men in their homes acknowledge the impact collective and individual histories have on our current social/sexual interactions. Like Hugh Steers's paintings his work exists between lived experience and fantasy, depicting a specific moment in time while proposing the potential to create new worlds and possibilities for Queer people. Bryson hods a Masters in Art Education from SVA and and MFA from Yale School of Art. His work has been exhibited in numerous group shows in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Haven and has been featured in publications including NEWSPAPER, Matte Magazine, Vice, and Palimpsest. Bryson's first solo exhibition titled 'Some Small Fever' was held at La MaMa Galleria in the Spring of 2017 with an accompanying publication produced by Raw Meat Collective. www.brysonrand.com