KISS / Limited Edition Photograph

John Waiblinger is a new media artist who explores masculinity and desire through his Post Photography compositions. Hailing from an academic background with degrees in English, Women's Studies and Library Science, Waiblinger redefined himself as an artist in his early 60s, first exhibiting his work at the Los Angeles Center for Digital Art (LACDA) in 2014. Since then he has continued to exhibit in galleries and has established a small group of collectors. Waiblinger is a member artist of LACDA, the Los Angeles Art Association and the Los Angeles Center of Photography. -------------------- Waiblinger states: -------------- "In my art I explore the mystery of why I find some men so beautiful and so intriguing. I use found images from the Internet's vast store of gay pornography, and combine them with my own photographs to articulate a relationship with those men. I consider the work Post Photography in that I am "making" a new photograph that is specific to my internal point of view. The work presents the men I've appropriated via their pornographic performance and reconstructs them within the realm of my imagination. I manipulate these images to portray a masculinity that celebrates softness and a different type of edge, creating a tension between the normative and the transgressive. Pornography tends to objectify whereas I prefer to romanticize. My intent is to investigate and illustrate how such juxtaposition can broaden perceptions and understandings of masculinity."