“Bring Me Men”: Fragments of the Masculinity Myth Through the Lens of Gray Wielebinski
Above the entrance tunnel of the United States Air Force Academy, a command was inscribed in massive letters: Bring Me Men. For decades, new cadets entering the academy sealed their transition from civilian to military life by passing under this very sentence. The father of London-based artist Gray Wielebinski (born in Dallas, 1991) was one of those students who personally experienced this ritual back in the 1970s.
Following systematic sexual assault and abuse scandals that erupted at the academy, this inscription was finally removed in 2023 due to the darkness of its underlying meaning. However, Wielebinski did not let these words go; instead, the artist took that heavy sentence and placed it right at the entrance of NICOLETTI Gallery in London. This inaugural solo exhibition with the gallery dissects how the culture of masculinity is constructed and socially reproduced.
Wielebinski’s interrogation in the exhibition is far from a mere theoretical or abstract debate. The artist transforms the cultural debris, broken objects, and found images of the masculine icon into physical sculptures. The familiar spaces where prototypes of male identity are manufactured—sports locker rooms, the bedroom walls of adolescent boys, and discarded vintage football season programs—fill the gallery space through the language of objects.
At the heart of the exhibition stands the work titled A Deskful of Boys (2026), which opens up the surface of a writing desk layer by layer, much like a collage anatomy. For Wielebinski, collage is a way to escape from the identity systems inherited from and imposed by the past—a way to tear those molds apart. Yet, the artist establishes a two-sided paradox here: today’s new surveillance and control mechanisms in the digital world also operate by gathering data just like a collage. The artist materializes this contradiction not through digital smoothness, but with crude, analog, and entirely handmade interventions.
Bring Me Men does not merely ask questions of the viewer; it leaves everyone standing alone in front of that harsh military command at the gallery entrance. Who can withstand being inside these masculine molds, rituals, and expectations today, and who remains captive behind those rigid boundaries? The exhibition can be experienced in London until July 4.
Exhibition Details:
- Venue: NICOLETTI Gallery, London
- Artist: Gray Wielebinski
- Exhibition Title: Bring Me Men
- Dates: June – July 4, 2026
Admission: Open to the public
