Contemporary Queer: Abundance
a national exhibition juried by Jasper A. Sanchez
on view
Featured Artists
Amanda Pickler, Anna Fischler, Bailey Triggs, Brian Christopher Glaser, Chris Tavares, Coyote Park, Daniel Roa, Frankie Pittorf, Forrest Wilson, Gray Winburne, Hogan Seidel, Joseph Barretto, Juno Soleil Vieira, Laicee Blackwell, Loring Taoka, Lyric Johnson, Melissa Wilkinson, Michelle Schapiro, Nathan Hosmer-Nevarez, Rowan Raskin, Sadie Malks, Tyler Sorgman
Gallery 263 is thrilled to present Contemporary Queer: Abundance, a national exhibition of 22 artists whose aesthetic and conceptual practices guide us toward the vastness of the queer experience. Amid state-sanctioned violence and heteronormative mythology, a queer positionality sees and imagines a world beyond that which is given.
Queer abundance is communal celebration and sexual liberation, as seen within the paintings of a group of friends in a Bushwick Dyke Bar by Amanda Pickler or of a humid sex dream by Bailey Triggs. It emerges in moments of play and quotidian intimacy, through a photograph of wrestlers in dirt by Michelle Schapiro and a ceramic scene by Juno Soleil Vieira of two queers jumping on a bed and dancing after a shower. Photographer Coyote Park reminds us that it is also found in waterways, laying on grass, in kinship with one another and the natural world. In a video piece by Hogan Seidel, it is found among cacophonous crowds and June streets slick with glitter, “unbroken, waiting.”
Queer abundance is equally a tactic of resistance and resilience—a dazzling camouflage in the hands of Loring Taoka, who negotiates between invisibility and hypervisibility to disorient predators. It allures and disorients, holding at the seams both grief and love, as seen in the mixed media work of Tyler Sorgman or the interwoven mediums in Laicee Blackwell’s Revelry. Nathan Hosmer-Nevarez reclaims Ecuadorian myth from colonial perversion using swirling and sensual flames to rebirth their ancestral queer god, the Chusalongo; while Forrest Wilson’s chimeric watercolor figures transform conservative narratives of the gay abomination into a divine calling. Lyric Johnson similarly challenges us to find abundance in that which is deemed monstrous by society, introducing a sculptural species to portray the complexity of Black, non-binary beings.
Juried by independent curator and queer art historian Jasper A. Sanchez, this exhibition asserts queer abundance as both a proclamation and as a tool for reclamation and liberation.
preview
About the juror
Jasper A. Sanchez (he/they), a Venezuelan-Colombian raised in Miami, is a curator and cultural organizer based in Boston. Their contemporary curatorial practice melds queer diasporas and reimagines public space to achieve creative justice, uplifting artists and making their work accessible. Sanchez has curated exhibitions with the Boston LGBTQIA+ Artist Alliance, Boston Center for the Arts, and Tufts University Art Galleries. Their writing and programming appear in the Boston Art Review. He is part of the Mobius Artists Group and the inaugural Collective Futures Fund Advisory Council. They hold a BA in Art History & Critical Theory from Lesley University in Cambridge.
About Contemporary Queer
In 2025, Gallery 263 broke its records for the number of visitors to an exhibition and reception with Contemporary Queer: A Love Letter. That exhibition was a direct response to the rise of anti-LGBTQ policies, and featured the complex splendor of queerness, ranging from activist art to personal diaries.
Queer art, in the context of these exhibitions, embraces fluidity and defies categorization. We feature work that queers the field – pieces that challenge binaries, disrupt norms, and celebrate the diversity of gender, sexuality, and identity. More than an exploration of difference, this year’s exhibited works assert presence, resilience, and interconnected experiences.