Continuing through March 28, 2026

In “Immortal,” John Paul Morabito pays tribute to the iconic pop musician Sylvester (1947-1988) with five abstract, woven, and lushly beaded tapestries in a show named after the singer’s posthumous album of the same name, with works associated with Sylvester’s back catalogue. These works are maximalist, celebrating visible, queer, and conscientious life with a studied virtuosity that responds to the clarion call of Sylvester’s notorious falsetto.

“Untitled (fever)” (2024) starts off the exhibition with pride of place and, at 98 by 47 inches, is slightly larger than the average door. The upper third of the work sports a retro-color palette of orange, blue, gold, red, maroon, and green-ochre stripes, woven together in a tight zig-zag composition. These highly saturated bands are outlined by thinner, soft orange stripes. Select passages of gold are further enhanced with gold beads, and the resulting uneven shining surface suggests the shimmering, festive clothing. Threads from this top woven portion resolve in long, fine beaded lines that fill the lower two-thirds of the work. The beaded, curtain-like extensions continue the same color palette into a crisscross pattern that adds to the sense of movement. A select portion of these beaded extensions pool on the ground, while parts of the beaded necklaces have short, flyaway threads that curl loose, like hair. 

Moribato’s “Untitled (fever)” is thus a cover of a cover of a song that has resurfaced throughout American history. It was first performed in 1956 by Little Willie John when it became a number one R&B hit, then again by Peggy Lee who eliminated nearly all of the instrumentation in favor of finger snaps, an occasional bongo, and a slow building bass. In Sylvester’s Hi-NRG rendition, background singers, orchestral accompaniment, synthesizers, and syncopated beats extoll early eighties recording techniques, with Sylvester’s androgynous voice reigning supreme. He recorded this in 1980, just a year before the first case of AIDS was reported in the U.S., five years before Sylvester’s partner was diagnosed with the disease, and seven years prior to Sylvester’s own diagnosis. He died in 1988 at the age of 41.

In 1978, Sylvester hit the Big Time with “You Make Me Feel (mighty real),” a single that to this day remains an anthem for sexual and gender liberation. Not surprisingly, it is also represented in Morabito’s show. As with other works on view, “Untitled (you make me feel, mighty real)” (2024) is also door-like at 93 by 47 inches, with the top third woven in a tight pattern that cascades into a curtain of intricately patterned beadwork. That pattern is composed of partially interlocking rectangles and zig-zags, this time made of eggplant, violet, lavender, hot pink, red, blue, green, gold, and black. Gold shimmers once again, and the other colors, though highly saturated, are rarely, if ever solid. The woven fabric thus creates a sheer impression, a sense furthered by the beaded extensions where different strands fall in a perfect choreography of interlocking stripes and hatches. Portions of the threaded beadwork are bare, which is to say, bead-less, resulting in a semi-transparent effect. And then there are the looping “necklaces” of fine gold beads that cross the picture plane at different lengths and angled arcs, playfully disrupting the otherwise right-angled parameters of the loom on which the work was woven. When asked about his inspiration, Sylvester said, “There weren’t a lot of words … but they said exactly what was going on: to dance and sweat and cruise and go home and carry on and how a person feels.” Morabito’s cascading beads and their gleaming finery sweat with the same dance floor lights, as though fading in dry ice, strobes, and shifting, rhythmic hips.

Each object in “Immortal” is “Untitled” with a parenthetical lowercase subtitled that references a song from Sylvester’s music catalogue. In this way, the text’s subtle grammatical layers echo the weaving pattern of its visual counterpart, always playing with abstraction, suggestive associations, and visibility. In so doing, Morabito creates formal comparisons between the woven patterns of his expert craft technique and Sylvester’s musical accomplishments, translating the emotional and, in Sylvester’s case, highly synthesized sonic presence into static, visual configurations. “Immortal” recalls not only the celebratory atmosphere and self-determinism of queer nightlife, but social activism as well. The exhibition is a reminder of life before the AIDS epidemic as much as the life immediately after, collecting that cumulative energy, “covering” it to create an album-length series of tapestry-songs through which Sylvester might, at any moment, reappear.