Tomorrow's Man 2

A psychedelic meditation on masculinity, the second volume of Jack Pierson's (b. 1960) Tomorrow's Man series doubles down on the collision of vintage beefcake and contemporary art that made the inaugural Lynn Valley volume a cult object.

Published by Bywater Bros. Editions in 2014, edited and designed by Pierson with publisher Roger Bywater, the 112-page softcover splices imagery appropriated from the 1950s-60s bodybuilding magazine that lends the series its name into contributions from fifteen artists working in wildly different registers — among them illustrator Mel Odom, painters Jeff Elrod, Paulo Monteiro and Richard Tinkler, conceptualist Alejandro Cesarco, ceramicist Dan McCarthy and photographer Evan Whale — with a short story by Veralyn Behenna rounding out the volume. The result reads like a physique magazine dreamed by an exquisite corpse, its layouts running images across gutters and centerfolds.

Pierson, who emerged from the Boston School alongside Nan Goldin and Mark Morrisroe, has made the artist's book a central strand of a practice spanning photography, collage and found-letter word sculptures his work is held by the Metropolitan Museum, the Whitney and the Guggenheim. All six Tomorrow's Man volumes are held in this collection.