The “Bats” series is a material investigation of the slipperiness of masculinity and gender performance. They first act as objects of play, brotherhood, and allegorical forms for the virtue of sportsmanship. Inversely they act as agents of violence, assurance of destruction, and support the fantasy of the swordsman or the barbarian. this contradiction of “good sport” and “bad boy” sets the framework to a dualistic representation of masculinity to draw and quarter masculine bodies. The Bats also become representations of male bodies themselves: dick jokes, with a range of functionality and displacement, humorously self destructive and self deprecating, they embody masculine performance in its harrowing triumphs and comical incompetence.
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