The wink/nod/clue to Robert Yoder's new show is its title: DILF!

Under every painted surface, there's a porn shot. You can't see the dicks anymore, but they're there, collaged on first, before anything else.

"To expose myself is vital in my work," Yoder writes in his statement for the show, at Platform Gallery (plenty of images). But he doesn't expose himself, or anyone else. No body parts appear. Instead, Yoder covers over, conceals, clothes porn in paint. And not just any paint, but white paint. Clean white paint, flecked with areas that glow flesh-pink, flesh-orange, flesh-brown. It's a whitewash that constantly points itself out. It's both a flirtation and an admission of shame.

Hiding is the commonest of queer survival strategies; the historic art exhibition Hide/Seek didn't get its name by accident. There are a million ways to hide in plain sight in art. Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg used a whole private language of codes and suggestions, puns and symbols. So does Jeffry Mitchell—they're just more obvious. But the act of coding itself—even if the codes are plainly breakable—is a testament to why art museums still need "queering," as this weekend's symposium in Seattle will discuss. Museums might be staffed by perfectly queer and queer-friendly people, but their "objective" stance implicitly supports what's considered "normal" unless that white, even facade is highlighted or broken in some way. (And it shouldn't always have to be the artists themselves who do the highlighting and the breaking.)

Yoder's other tactic in DILF! is spatial. He hangs the paintings and drawings in funny groupings, like little like-minded congregations, or in funny spots on the wall. One piece, Untitled (Lukas) is an oil painting (over a hidden porn shot) mounted on a layer of mylar. It hangs off-center on the back wall of the gallery, which means you see it immediately when you enter, at the far end. It also hangs low (maybe genital height?). The reflective mylar backing creates the illusion that the painting is set in a dark hole cut in the wall. It feels like the painting wishes it were fucking the gallery, in senses both playful and sad.