Larry Stanton: IMAGES, a solo retrospective for the work of eponymous late artist on view at Brescia’s Apalazzo Gallery through January 6, 2025, transports audiences to a vivid, bygone world. The exhibition, which celebrates the life and art of Manhattan-based portraitist Larry Stanton, pulses with the energy of New York’s queer culture of the 1970s and ’80s. Curated by Fabio Cherstich, this show transforms the historic palazzo into a sensorial time capsule, immersing visitors in Stanton’s evocative works and the era that shaped him.

Cherstich, a celebrated theater and opera director, extends his storytelling prowess to curation, crafting an experience as intimate as it is monumental. He also takes on the role of performer, having staged a live action during the exhibition’s opening in Brescia and with two satellite performances hosted at La MaMa in New York from December 14th through 16th. The exhibition weaves Stanton’s compelling portraits—infused with the essence of his subjects—with rare Super 8 films and a nostalgic playlist curated by critic Vince Aletti, evoking the joyous yet fleeting moments of gay life in New York and Fire Island. The ambiance, punctuated by the traumas of AIDS crisis, underscores the poignancy of Stanton’s brief but profound legacy.

Cherstich frames the exhibition as an act of love—love for Stanton’s artistry, his resilience, and the community he immortalized. For Document, TONO Festival founder Sam Ozer sits down with Cherstich to discuss the memory, legacy, and enduring power of Stanton through Larry Stanton: IMAGES.

Larry Stanton in his studio. Courtesy the Estate of Larry Stanton.

Sam Ozer: I love that almost immediately upon walking into the exhibition in this historic Brescian palazzo, you hear anthems from the ’70s and ’80s. Then you walk into one of the side rooms and there is a monitor with a film of this super hot guy posing…

Fabio Cherstich: I asked Vince Aletti, who is a very close friend of mine, to create a specific playlist of songs that gay men used to play at parties between 1975 and 1982 in New York City and on Fire Island that is played in this room installed with a monitor of a Super 8 film that has a loop of a gogo boy. I wanted the exhibition to have a sound which is very joyful. It’s giving something sexy to the show, which is something that I always try to achieve. In the US, as well as the rest of the world, the fear of AIDS was strong in the ’80s and ’90s, with its trail of disease and death. In hindsight, I realize that I lived through the end of an era, a world that would change irrevocably within a few short years. To look at Larry’s life and work today isn’t only to be struck by his enormous charm and the beauty of his work; I’m also reminded of that fundamental period of my own upbringing.

Sam: It’s really interesting to see this show in Brescia, this small city outside of Milan and to think about an audience response to works that were all made in New York City and Fire Island about a specific queer community there. I’m curious about your passion and dedication to New York and someone who has never lived there. It’s such a specific era.

Fabio: This is interesting also because I come from Italy. I used to go to New York at least four or five times per year, but maximum four days at a time. So everything I’ve done, I’ve done it in a very short time and in a very precise way. I never lived in New York, even if New York, for me, was the most [significant place]. With Larry Stanton, I’m so involved in his rediscovery and so on, because I always had the feeling that I had friends coming from the past. Larry had a very special friendship with Arthur [Lambert], who was his ex-boyfriend and mentor. I know his sister, I know this best friend. We had dinner together when Arthur died, and I was with the family. I never met [Patrick] Angus but I have the feeling that even if we never met, I know that they are part of my family in a way. It’s the same about the spaces I’ve never been to. There is a paradox in my mind, because Fire Island—I have never been—but I know Fire Island through the videos of Larry Stanton and through the stories that I read. In a way, there is this feeling of a melancholy of something that you never lived. I feel melancholic about the time I was not even born.

Left: Photography by Melania Della Grave. APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia, Italy, 2024. Courtesy the artist and APALAZZOGALLERY. Right: David Hockney in Ken tyler graphics, 1978. Courtesy the Estate of Larry Stanton and APALAZZOGALLERY.

Sam: This exhibition really is a love story.

Fabio: All the exhibitions [I organize] are love stories between me and the artist and the audience. The gallery is about love and friendship. All of my shows are built on friendships. Do you remember my show in Venice around Roberto Juarez, Amigos y Amigas? To me, these shows are the same. I’m inspired greatly by both of these artists. Because of my background I’m always considering how important the audience is, the perception, the storytelling, the information that the audience got from the show, etc.

Sam: It’s interesting to think about your curation in the context of your work as a director for theater and many classical operas. Do you approach curation in the same way as a script, in terms of the historical source material? Of course there must be a connection you need to feel with a character, even if you didn’t live during that time.

Fabio: I don’t see any difference between designing an exhibition, directing an opera, creating a book, etc. Every time I’m telling a story in a space through images and words, it can be a white page, a white stage, an empty gallery, or an empty apartment. It can be with paintings, photography, video, with performers or without performers, with the script or without the script, but it’s always the same. It’s all about storytelling and about understanding how stories are read. The director is the one who is reading something that most of the time was written by someone else and is giving their personal point of view, and sharing this with an audience.

Sam: Do you think a curator and a director have the same role then? The same way of working with artists or actors?

Fabio: For me, yes, but this is my personal definition. I don’t see boundaries. Harald Szeemann trained as a director, so I take him as an example of this curatorial process. I was really happy when I discovered this about him.

Sam: How do you approach scenography or exhibition design?

Fabio: What I like to do is use the space for what it is. The gallery in Brescia is so beautiful because it’s an ancient building, so I didn’t have the feeling that I needed to add anything. I decided to install in the main space of the gallery the Super 8 movies, because no one ever saw them. There’s one incredible movie about David Hockney doing the Paper Pools series in 1978 which is the only existing video documentation of Hockney doing one of the most important masterpieces. On another screen you have the gay pride in Manhattan and the gay life in the apartment of Arthur in Fire Island. So you have the other side of him [Larry]. Installing these two videos together for me, was trying to create a dialog between two parts that are so relevant, to understand Larry’s background, but at the same time to let the audience understand the visuality and how capable he was of creating beautiful images.

Sam: In the book you edited with Arthur, Larry Stanton: Think of Me When It Thunders (Apartamento Publishing, 2022) you pull a text that Hockney originally said about Larry in Larry Stanton: Painting and Drawing (Twelvetrees Press, 1986)—Larry Stanton was a portraitist. Skill in portraiture is an instinct, it cannot be taught…Other aspects of personality show in the body—posture, ways of moving, etc.—but most is revealed in the face. People make their own faces, and Larry knew this instinctively. As his paintings developed, so did his desire to stay in one place, as he found it provided all he needed for his art.” What was their relationship like and how did their time together in specific places in NYC and Fire Island influence his work?

Fabio: So the way Larry was filming and framing reality—portraits, still life, colors—was really, strongly influenced by the friendship with David Hockney. He met him when he was really young. They become friends, maybe lovers; the borders feel quite open. And so you can really understand that in a way, he was not just getting inspiration, he was framing reality. And so it’s like a visual diary.

Sam: Beyond Larry’s approach, the exhibition exists as a visual diary for a specific moment of queer culture in America in the ’70s and ’80s, or at least a vision of it, and how it really lent to a specific imagination of a place.

Photography by Melania Della Grave. APALAZZOGALLERY, Brescia, Italy, 2024. Courtesy the artist and APALAZZOGALLERY.

Fabio: In front of these double videos I installed another video that Larry edited which is a trip from Manhattan to the countryside of New York, where his family was living on a farm. So you have rural America—rivers, beautiful gardens, trees. And then there’s a sequence with the birthday of his sister in the living room. There’s this intimacy and also a rural background.

Sam: For the opening of the exhibition you also presented a performance titled Visual Diary. Can you speak about this experience?

Fabio: I was on stage with a desk like a light and two video projections, one right, one left. I told the audience the story of my research on three artists, Patrick Angus, Larry Stanton, and Darrel Ellis. It’s a visual diary as it’s built with images that I took with my phone during my trip to meet artist families in Arkansas or the first time I entered Arthur’s apartment in New York. It’s a mix between my biography, the biography of the artist, and the other actors that are with me. It’s very intimate, But it was super strong to perform it at the opening, because I was supposed to do it just for the big preview for press. And it was super crowded. In a way, the performance is like a sort of memorial with a lot of music, a lot of images, but it’s also sad, and it’s all about memory and legacy.

Sam: It becomes a new way of presenting or responding to Larry’s legacy and creating new connections with these artists.

Fabio: Yes, the performance is the story of Larry Stanton and how we met, but it also gives the possibility for Patrick and Darrel to be present within the show of Larry. For me, it’s always adding one layer into a show which might be focused on one artist and to talk at least about one or two other artists that might need visibility. My collection has many pieces, many stories. So each picture, each image, has a huge background, also in terms of books and documents. And because I was obsessed with this idea of archiving things, because I understood from my experience, how important it is to keep the archive as much as possible, accessible, precise, and then, of course, this idea of archive is related to the idea of legacy and storytelling.