BRIGHT IDEA The exhibit will include Mike Estabrook's David Wojnarowicz in Heaven

the 1980s East Village art scene and queer-AIDS activist movement, David Wojnarowicz has had his work shown, imitated and honored countless times since his 1992 AIDS-related death at the age 37. This week, Chelsea’s P.P.O.W. gallery continues that tradition, but with a decidedly different twist: through a group show of artists—many of whom are too young to have been Wojnarowicz’s contemporaries, but who have been thoroughly influenced by him nevertheless.

“There have been so many shows done before this one about the ’80s Lower East Side movement,” said Jamie Sterns, director of P.P.O.W., which represents Wojnarowicz’s estate. “But now everything is so totally different—in the art world, in the gay art world—and we thought it would be interesting to do a show that wasn’t a reiteration of his work. So many artists have been influenced by him who are in their twenties, and we wanted to know: How does that translate?”

The exhibit, “History Keeps Me Awake at Night: A Genealogy of Wojnarowicz,” will show that translation through the lens of 18 artists—painters, filmmakers and photographers—as well as through the presentations of four local writers, who will read from their work on the evening of July 17, when some of Wojnarowicz’s films will be screened. The multidisciplinary showcase reflects just how diverse and prolific the artist was, using painting, writing, photography, sculpture, film, video, performance art, graphics and music to express his views and, in the last decade of his life, having nearly 20 solo shows and participating in close to 200 group shows.

“What he did was so honest and so real,” Sterns notes. “It encapsulates a time but also encapsulates a universality of struggle and anger—that if you say something loud and long enough, you will be heard.”

It’s a message that resonates with many of the artists involved in the P.P.O.W. show, including Matt Wolf, a New York–based documentary filmmaker who once made an experimental biography of Wojnarowicz. “I see David as this kind of legendary figure, and part of the lineage of gay artists,” says Wolf, 26, who, as a young queer activist growing up in San Jose, California, discovered him by googling “gay artists” and became enamored with his unpolished passion. “I see myself as a gay artist, and I want to participate in that legacy by being thoughtful and emotional in complex ways.”

Painter Keith Mayerson depicts political, historical and pop-culture icons in fantastical, often homoerotic settings (his 1993 drawing series, “Pinocchio the Big Fag,” got him quickly noticed). He recalls that seeing Wojnarowicz’s work for the first time in the late ’80s brought on an intellectual epiphany. “It was so raw, so kind of in-your-face, and I said to my friends, ‘How can this be wonderful artwork when it is so unaesthetic?’ They told me that a lot of people were dying of AIDS, and there was no time to make it beautiful,” he recalls. “I realized then that things don’t have to be beautiful to be good—though even the really rough installations seem kind of beautiful to me now.”

Similarly, the multidiscipinary artist Emily Roysdon will show photographs from her “David Wojnarowicz Project,” in which she pays homage to the artist’s “Arthur Rimbaud in New York” series—photos of friends shot around the city, all wearing a paper mask of the French poet. Roysdon’s subjects—including a woman on a bed stroking a strap-on dildo—are wearing Wojnarowicz masks. “I first encountered David’s work in an exhibition catalog about body politics,” she recalls. “Soon after that I read his Close to the Knives, which remains a favorite book and was very influential. Reading that text was a visceral experience for me. I was turned on, I identified. I had questions, I wanted more.”

The gallery’s reading night will feature more folks influenced by Wojnarowicz’s literary style, including poet and prose writer Sara Marcus, currently writing a history of the riot-grrrl movement. She’s been particularly affected by Seven Miles a Second, a comic-book collaboration between Wojnarowicz and illustrator James Romberger. “He sort of blows language open,” Marcus says, “and there is this ecstasy of expression in his prose that has influenced my writing from the inside.”

“History Keeps Me Awake at Night: A Genealogy of Wojnarowicz” Thu, July 10.