My artistic practice employs a multi-disciplinary, concept-oriented approach that combines sculpture, installation, photography, projection, video, sound, and sometimes performance as a means to interweave both personal and political messages. As a gay, cis-man, I draw inspiration from issues found within queer culture.
The current focus of my research in both materiality and imagery is the slippage that often occurs between the erotic and traumatic. I am interested in exploring the intersection of these two terms in relation to the queer male body and site-specific places of intimacy and memory: places of vulnerability, but those which are also potent with sexuality and virility, often serving as backdrops for violence against queer individuals. Often physical or bodily, this new work is a response to extreme masculinity from the perspective of a queer Midwesterner. It attempts to conjure the moments leading up to, and after, in which a person can be simultaneously seduced and frightened, by subverting the "male gaze” on itself, and perhaps slightly suggestive of something abject.
Conley Clark is an multidisciplinary artist. He was born and raised in Cape Girardeau, Missouri and received his B.F.A. in Studio Art at Southeast Missouri State University in 2016, where he specialized in Sculpture. After graduating, he worked professionally as the Gallery Manager for a small non-profit organization, the Arts Council of Southeast Missouri. Currently, he is an M.F.A. candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.