Queer Portraits, in Gallery 44 vitrines, is an ongoing series of large-scale colour photographs of Levine’s community in Montreal that captures the artist’s complex emotional relationships to friends, lovers, and siblings. Each portrait is taken in a different domestic setting, characterized by saturated colours and discursive backgrounds. Using professional lighting and a medium-format film camera, Levine creates a studio within each home environment, positioning objects that appear within the frame. These settings explore private queer space as a realm for the development of community and the expression of genders and sexualities often marginalized within the public sphere.

Queer Portraits is also on view at The Gladstone Hotel Art Bar.

• JJ Levine is an image-based artist living in Tiohti:áke/Montreal, known for his compelling body of work in portraiture. Represented by ELLEPHANT (Montreal), Levine’s artwork has been exhibited at museums and galleries internationally. A major retrospective of his work, JJ Levine: Queer Photographs, is currently on view at the McCord Museum (Montreal). His images have been featured in such publications as Photography and Culture, CV Photo, Esse, Slate, The Guardian Observer, and Society. Levine holds an MFA in Photography from Concordia University. In 2015, he self-published two artist books: Queer Portraits: 2006-2015 and Switch. Levine’s art practice balances a queer ethos with a strong formal aesthetic.