Easy Rider

"A small piece of shiny shiny metal stuck in between the teeth. She was talking to someone but this, this right here, takes precedence." In her latest solo exhibition, Easy Rider, Paez Armando presents a new body of work consisting of metal and resin sculptures and prints on aluminium. Developed over the past year and informed by queer films such as Love Lies Bleeding and Titane, the works consider how the boundary between the organic and the industrial begins to blur, corrode, and ultimately collapse. Rather than a dramatic transformation, Easy Rider offers something quieter but no less visceral. Flesh doesn’t disappear but becomes alloyed; wounds are glossed over. Paez Armando’s process embraces the grotesque and the cinematic, drawing not only from body horror but also from the prosthetic ingenuity of 1980s prop-making, when the monstrous was sculpted, weighty, and built by hand. The resulting sculptural environments feel both seductive and unsettling. Through material excess and tactile precision, Easy Rider stages an encounter with a queer corporeality that is both futuristic and intimate. The sculptures are accompanied by a sound piece composed by Gediminas Žygus that echoes the tension between body and metal. The exhibition also features newly commissioned texts by writers Amelia Groom and Monique Todd, which further reflect on the themes of body-horror, desire, and queer embodiment that permeate the work. Easy Rider is made possible with the support of the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts (AFK). It was produced by Nina Oude Ophuis, with printed matter by attempt press.