.Yellow No. 5, Bruh: A Solo exhibition by Eli Thorne

Oakland artist Eli Thorne’s 2014 Mills College MFA thesis installation looked like a parody of an Olympian gymnastics gym. Bars crisscrossed each other to form a tower mounting a net filled with yellow tennis balls. Heavy, concrete balls hung from thick blue ropes attached to a wall with a metal bar. And royal blue flags dangled from the ceiling. The installation pinpointed an amusing aesthetic that registered immediately as athletic, yet didn’t actually mimic any existing athletic gear. Now, for a solo show at Royal NoneSuch Gallery (4231 Telegraph Ave.) entitled Yellow No. 5, Bruh, Thorne is going in on normative notions of masculinity with the same style of parody and a similar focus on sports culture. For the show, Thorne will be entirely transforming the space into a hyperbolic metaphor for male-ness made up of materials associated with home gyms, jocks, caffeine and male entitlement. Yellow No. 5, Bruh opens on Friday, April 29, with a reception from 7–10 p.m.