Gray Wielebinski: Bring Me Men

Bring Me Men is the first solo exhibition by London-based American artist Gray Wielebinski (b. 1991, Dallas, TX) at Nicoletti Contemporary, running from 28 May to 4 July 2026. A follow-up to the gallery’s solo presentation of his work at Frieze London 2025, Wielebinski uses his first major gallery solo of the year to interrogate the construction of masculinity — its myths, its materials, and its quiet violences — through sculpture, collage, installation, and scent. Thom Oosterhof visits Nicoletti.

“Bring Me Men” said the United States Air Force Academy for many decades before being removed in 2023 following a significant sexual misconduct scandal. Gray Wielebinski now uses the phrase as a welcoming note that sets the tone for his new exhibition of the same name at Nicoletti Contemporary in London. Though this time it is not posed as a statement, more as a question. Gray Wielebinski’s first solo at the gallery addresses the issue of modern masculinity head-on. By taking the materials of masculine formation and putting them directly in your hands, they become unavoidable. Boxes, shopping bags, athletic accessories, rulers, leather gloves, and a decorated school locker. The aesthetic of a male adolescent’s environment. These charged spaces where identity is first explored. Desire, social bonds, and prohibitions of queer intimacy all quietly whispered through the halls of youth. Here, their voice rings a little louder.

“My practice is very informed by reading and language, and I have always been very interested in “pregnant” words – words rich with allusions and double meanings,” says Gray, “I used to explore this through titling my pieces, which was often an important lynchpin of the conceptual aspect of the work, but I was a little afraid to actually use text directly in the work. That changed with this show, because it’s the show where I’m doing everything that I was afraid to do previously.”

This fear hasn’t seemed to affect the narrative in his Abercrombie & Fitch bags. Deconstructed and reframed as camp, quasi-religious icons in custom cross-shaped frames, they lay bare the entanglement of consumer culture and masculine ideal with Gray’s undoubted precision for storytelling. Both are forms of devotion. Branding as devotion. The catalogue as its catechism. There is also a decommissioned bathroom that sits almost inaccessible. Visible only through two holes cut into the gallery wall, it contains an installation that merges sound and scent. One to depict bodily must, the other, aromas of aspirational luxury. One is confronted with a choice. Exclusion or voyeur. Gray leaves no space for the middle ground. The show runs until the 4th of July, and boy, does it leave a mark.

For more information, please consult Nicoletti Contemporary’s website here →

Last Updated on June 18, 2026