Buffalo Spree: December 2023

Rivalry opens photography and collage exhibit.

- Alberto Rey

THIS MONTH, Rivalry Projects owner Ryan Arthurs and director Olivia McManus present the work of Clifford Prince King and Ryan Patrick Krueger in an exhibition entitled keep a place for me. For this exhibition, Prince King selected photographs from 2017 to 2023 to document everyday moments of intimacy, sexuality, queer culture, and Black sublimity.

"King’s images reenact moments to create a tangible extension of memory," says McManus. Prince King’s artwork can be found at the Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, California), Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum (Long Beach, California), Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and Studio Museum in Harlem. His photographs have also been featured in Aperture, Interview, the New York Times, Vogue, and the Wall Street Journal.

Ryan Patrick Krueger premieres a new body of collage-based wall works that incorporate photo booth pictures, objects collected from everyday experiences and encounters, documents and photographs collected from eBay and thrift stores, queer publications, and historical documents. Each collection is a narrative investigating tangential connection between the past and present, between relationships created and lost, and between social perceptions of queer culture over the decades.

Kreuger is pursuing his MFA in Photography from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and has exhibited at the Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), Rivalry Projects, Tiger Strikes Asteroid (New York), MONACO (St. Louis), and in the 2022 Fotofest Biennial in Houston. His work has been featured in Art in America, the Brooklyn Rail, Out Smart, Sixty Inches From Center, and Glasstire.

Arthurs was first introduced to Prince King’s work through Krueger in 2020, as Krueger and King have known each other since they met in Portland, Oregon in the 2010s. Arthurs and McManus began working on this exhibition in summer 2022, conversing with each artist independently. Over time, McManus says, "it became clear that exhibiting their work together would create cohesive and poetic narrative around intimacy and queer coming of age."

Rivalry Projects is located at 106 College in Allentown. keep a place for me is on view from November 3-December 22. For details, visit, rivalryprojects.com. __A.R.