“You Don’t Have to Be Alone Tonight” Opening Reception | SF

Submitted by the Event Organizer

The title of painter Dan Gluibizzi’s latest body of work, You Don’t Have to Be Alone Tonight, is drawn from a Christmas Eve listserve posting for a sex theater in Portland, Oregon. The reference deftly captures the nature of Gluibizzi’s creative practice, which centers on amateur adult content imagery culled from myriad online sources.

In this series, the artist explores online interactions as they trace a metaphoric line to constellations. As heavenly formations once connected and confounded observers, so internet and social media now receive and display our hopes and fears through the ether, to points often unknown.

Gluibizzi eliminates the spatial referents when rendering the subjects he finds engaged in erotic acts. Through watercolor—a medium generally associated with the ease and innocence of children’s art—his subjects form a tangle of limbs that accrue a distinct visual presence through color and formal repetition. The figures, cut from their digital platform, are re-imagined in a decidedly analog method, bringing human touch to the digital world.

You Don’t Have to be Alone Tonight arouses complex questions about the nature of communication and intimacy. Beyond wondering who these anonymous actors are, Gluibizzi’s practice spurs us to consider how online communication informs or hinders our taste for direct contact.

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