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the debut international solo-exhibition by Reuben Brown at “The Backshop” at Culterim Gallery, Gesundbrunnen, Brunnenstraße 107, 13355 Berlin; Germany.06-09 March 2025
White Knuckle Forever is a love letter to the fleeting - a pulse held in tension, an echo in the dark. It traces the whispered intimacies that shape queer lives, unravelling the quiet gestures of queer masculine romance: breaths held, bodies tighten, white knuckled fists clench.
Set within queer club-spaces of the past, White Knuckle Forever dances through the fragile histories of queer nightlife that press against the present. Through experimental film, sculpture, works on paper, jewellery, participation and performance, and a research pamphlet/artist book developed alongside the exhibition, White Knuckle Forever becomes a precarious archive of both devotion and disappearance.
White Knuckle Forever presents a new body of work by Reuben Brown that unfolds through processes of fragmentation and reassembly, tracing the fragile and ephemeral histories of queer nightlife. Materials shift, distort and are pulled apart, footage is broken and restitched, images unravel into gestures and sounds, delicate surfaces hover on the edge of disappearance. These acts of rupture and reconstruction echo the ways queer histories persist; scattered, splintered and partial. Each work in the exhibition enacts a cycle of dispersion and retrieval, where memory is both unstable and enduring.
2025
0.3mm pen on paper.
Using AI, selected close-ups from found imagery are converted into continous sine waves; smooth, periodic oscillations that vary in amplitude and frequency. The structure of the sine waves are then used to generate a continous piece of sound which is used as a (non-)visual reference for a hacked 2D-plotter. The 2D-plotter draws the image onto paper using pen, reconstructing the original image through the mechanical movement of its armature across the 2D-axis.
2025
Sculptural-assemblage/vanity mirror comprised of; laser-engraved mirror perspex vanity, laser-cut and laser-engraved transparent and mirror perspex embellishments, hardware and chain, heart-shaped locket on chain with photograph, custom engraved dog-tag and chain, and jewellery chain.
60 x 30 x 10 cm [approx]
2025
Custom engraved dog-tag diptych and chain
3 x 10 x 1 cm [approx]
2025
BANDICAM-captured found footage, reuploaded to YouTube in two hundred and fifteen thirty-second clips, continuously interrupted by intermittent ads, screened live on YouTube on iPhone X with Apple earphones.
215 x 30 second clips [1920x1080px] uploaded to YouTube Playlist “ISAK AND EVEN || SKAM” (2018)
https://youtu.be/RmoNt7HONbI?si=eb-Usk3U9tf78hCL
Isak and Even borrows footage from Norwegian teen drama, Skam, which aired aired from 2015 to 2017, focusing on the lives of the students at Hartvig Nissen School in Oslo. Each season centred on a different main character, exploring themes such as identity, sexuality, relationships and societal issues. The show’s innovative real-time storytelling and authentic portrayal of teenage life garnered significant international attention, leading to multiple international adaptations.
2025, Projected found footage/fetish content [720x576px] 2 min 31 sec (loop)
&
Guy punching in leather gloves, jacket and pants (Website now up!).mp4
2025, Projected found footage/fetish content [960x720px] 2 min 24 sec (loop)
2025
Laser-cut and engraved mirror perspex vanity.
15 x 25 x 2 cm
White Knuckle Forever also features; [Documentation Pending]
club [construction]: pamphlet 1
2025
153 page research pamphlet, risograph printed on 55gsm awagami unryu paper. club [construction] pamphlet 1 is the first pamphlet in a series of non-linear experimental pamphlets compiling first-hand research conducted by Reuben Brown into club-culture of the past, present and imagined future. The first editions of this pamphlet have been printed on extremely fragile awagami unryu paper which is made from river-bed weeds - the paper itself is so delicate that if it were to be handled carelessly it would begin to degrade immediately. This, in combination with the four-part risograph printing process, hopes to reflect the fragility of the histories documented in the pamphlet.
A6 pamphlet, 153 pages
This project was created with generous support from Culterim Gallery, Berlin & The Arts Council of Northern Ireland through the Support for Individual Artist Practice (SIAP) National Lottery Travel Award 2024.