Dean Sameshima

DEAN SAMESHIMA (Torrance, California, 1971).
“Untitled (Testicles),” 2003.
Photograph, Fuji-Flex print, print no. 1/3.
Edition of 3 prints + A.P.
Accompanied by a certificate of authenticity issued by Peres Projects, Berlin, signed by Javier Peres and dated September 9, 2016.
Reference bibliography: C. Kraus, J. Tumlir, and J. McFadden, *LA Artland. Contemporary Art from Los Angeles*, London, 2005, p. 131 (another copy from the edition reproduced).
Measurements: 31 x 24.5 cm (image); 53.5 x 47 cm (frame).

Dated 2003, “Untitled (Testicles)” belongs to an early and defining period in Dean Sameshima’s oeuvre, when the artist was developing a photographic practice based on the appropriation and reworking of images linked to male desire and queer culture. The work is part of a series of six photographs from that same year—*Mutual Masturbation*, *Climax*, *Gay*, *Testicles*, *Blow Job*, and *Erection*—for which an edition of three copies plus an artist’s proof is documented. Another copy was also reproduced in *LA Artland. Contemporary Art from Los Angeles* in 2005.

Here, Sameshima employs an image with a deliberately media-like appearance, in which even the print texture of the original remains visible. The seemingly innocuous nature of the portrait creates a tension with the title, which completely alters its interpretation and focuses attention on the body, the gesture, and the cultural construction of desire. This strategy of recovering and recoding materials from publications, archives, and other visual circulation channels would prove fundamental to his subsequent career; Peres Projects has defined his practice precisely in terms of his role as a collector and archivist of images related to pornography, punk and queer cultures, and their coded languages.

Dean Sameshima studied at the California Institute of the Arts and the ArtCenter College of Design. Since the late 1990s, he has developed a body of work centered on photography, the archive, memory, and forms of representation of queer identity and desire. In 2024, he participated in the 60th Venice Biennale, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, and his work is held in institutional collections such as the Getty Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Hammer Museum, and the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, among others. He lives and works in Berlin.