Art or erotica? Joe Oppendisano’s aptly titled ‘On
Your Knees,’ one of the works in Art @ Large’s juried show —
is a good example of how the two sometimes blur.
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By Stephen D'Agostino
Friday, June 24, 2005
To really appreciate New Erotix, the juried show at Art @ Large, you have to
like ‘em circumcised. No, not those.
You have to like your art circumcised, void of the prefixes homo- and hetero-.
Think of these works as produced not by homosexual or heterosexual people, but
by sexual people.
To dwell on an artist’s sexuality is “overlooking that here is
a group of people who are all working on the subject of sex and art,”
says Grady T. Turner, curator of the show. “That’s a bigger thing
to have in common than the sexuality in the terms of the art in our show.”
I, Sherlock Homo, went searching for clues in these 41 pieces by 38 artists
to determine which were done by the eight gay entrants (according to Art @ Large
owner Pet Silvia’s estimates — he can only guess; he doesn’t
ask and he doesn’t care). For some works, it’s obvious: Joe Oppendisano’s
“On Your Knees” —two tattooed hotties. Who but a gay man would
do a piece of buff pecs, nipples pierced and chained?
I picked “Divine” to be the work of a lesbian, simply because
it is of two nude women holding each other. I was wrong. I picked a charcoal
drawing of a bound naked male as that of a gay man. Wrong again.
While I was trying to make things more elementary than they were, I overlooked
both the erotic and the art in these erotic art pieces.
This is the third year Art @ Large is doing this juried show. Turner, who
was once the curator of the Museum of Sex, came up with the idea because he
saw a need.
“I think it’s a very interesting ghetto within the art world,”
Turner says. The gallery made a call for submissions and over 300 artists submitted
over 900 pieces. It was up to Turner to sift through the submissions and to
decide what was worthy of a place in the show.
He judged the work without knowing the artist’s gender or sexual orientation.
What motivated him was that the pieces chosen reflected the diversity of the
media of the submissions — a true representation of the types of work
artists are producing — and that the work be good.
Silvia sums it up by saying, “that’s really what we’re looking
for—quality, good art.”
If Silvia’s assumptions are correct and there are eight gay artists
in the show — 21 percent (greater than the percentage of gays in the general
population) — then in the eyes of Silvia and Turner, gay artists are excelling
at making quality erotic art.
Silvia admits that male homoerotic art does tend to be more explicit, possibly,
he feels, as a means of getting over all the “bullshit” gays face
growing up.
Yet he cautions that explicit erotic art doesn’t necessarily mean quality
erotic art. “It’s not about the naked body,” Silvia says.
“It’s not about the largest hard-on in the universe. It’s
not about woman having the most glamorous looking figure. It’s about the
honest interpretation that the artist makes of this subject matter.”
So, orientation aside, does New Erotix represent honest interpretations of
the subject matter? Does it represent quality erotic art? For the most part,
yes.
Brian Crede’s “Flesh & Steel #1,” the pierced nipples
work, is, thanks to its limited, earthy palette, beautifully rendered. Marie
Green’s “Orange Female w/Purple Male on Gray” captures sex
as the joining of two bodies into one act, confusing where the man starts and
the woman ends.
“Braces and Laces,” and “Maria de Sade” will make
you chuckle. Curry Mendes’s “Divine,” the piece I mistook
as work done by a lesbian, is fiery and somewhat mysterious.
In the end, of course, it’s up to the viewers to determine if they think
the work is both art and erotic. “Look at the work,” Silvia suggests
“be turned on by it, attracted to it, intellectualize over it.”
In other words, circumcise your prefix, go with an open mind, and see the
work of sexual beings as a sexual being and an art lover.
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