Doug Ischar: Orderly

The Chicago-based artist Doug Ischar has created a new installation for the List Visual Arts Center titled Orderly. 

Ischar explores our cultural mythology to unearth and examine the stereotypes and presumptions embedded within our systems of communication, especially as they relate to behavior among men. As an openly gay artist dealing with highly charged social and political issues, Ischar challenges his audience to examine their own attitudes and beliefs in relation to culturally sanctioned myths and assumptions.

Trained as a documentary photographer, Ischar has recently made complex installations incorporating a wide range of visual and textual materials including rephotographed illustrations and photographs from vintage magazines and textbooks, video and 8mm film loops, and text from a wide range of sources. Ischar’s new installation for the LVAC deals in part with our country’s cultural and political climate as it relates to one of today’s most hotly contested issues – the exclusion of gay men and lesbians from the U.S. Armed Forces. Exhibition curator Ronn Platt states, “In Orderly Doug Ischar forcefully combines pointed topical commentary with cryptic and poetic visuals in a highly individual presentation. Orderly is formally playful and darkly intimate; a quirky and engaging look at American cultural politics.”