By James Hastur

Shamus Clisset’s exhibition AlphaAF at Postmasters Gallery uses 3D modeling and game rendering software to ridicule and mock the concepts of toxic masculinity and masculine aggression. The image Laocoon (2021), depicts a man resembling an ancient Greek statue wrestling with his own penis, which has grown considerably and transformed into a snake at the tip. The phallic monster representing man’s own aggression and self-destructive tendencies as toxic masculinity will only yield more toxicity and aggression. Other images continue to use phallic imagery next to representations of aggression in order to display a similar point.

Weapons and tools also symbolize the male phallus with images of men holding tools and NFTs of tools in an empty space. These NFTs, displayed on cracked and broken iPhones plugged into the wall next to each other, show the powerlessness of male aggression, and how it can only exist within a real world context. When you remove the human from a tool, when you place the tool in a digital void where it can’t be used, what does it become? It is useless; it is something to be looked at, but something that has no power. The hammer, an aggressive tool, cannot hit any nails or be wielded. Trapped within the digital void, it is safe to be viewed without any fear of harm or power.

SHAMUS CLISSET Dunking on You in my Sleep, 2021

Another recurring motif throughout the exhibition is basketball, occurring in two still images and two real time computer simulations. In one such computer simulation, Party’s Over (2021), a skull with sunglasses and a party hat are bombarded with basketballs and other skulls falling from the sky. In Dunking on You in my Sleep (2021), a devil sits on a man dunking a basketball as he lies asleep floating through the air.

The computer simulations that Clisset uses in his works create a sense of the uncanny throughout his images. Freud’s concept is shown here as these almost realistic looking men who are displayed in aggressively masculine poses and transformed into objects of their own aggression and toxicity.

AlphaAF allows us to imagine a world where aggressive masculinity is not inhibited whatsoever, but rather, one in which anger and dominance reign. In this world, violence rules, and it is filled with anger and death. We shouldn’t want this simulated world. Looking at it created through Unreal Engine, we can see a different path which we can follow, one where men’s anger and toxic masculinity doesn’t lead to self-destruction.

Shamus Clisset’s AlphaAF is open at Postmasters Gallery though October 16th