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Cecilia Bengolea & François Chaignaud Sylphides (2019)
‘ Bengolea and Chaignaud are as interested in academic techniques as they are in more colloquial bodily expressions. In Sylphides, they are literally entrapped inside vacuum sealed latex bags, forcing them on the verge of breathlessness.’
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Maryam Jafri Depression (2017)
‘Jafri’s surreal sculptures include cupping equipment set in an egg carton, a roll of “toilet paper” made out of a strip of purple yoga mat, and, yes, those realistic-looking human feet, purchased from a fetish-object merchandiser and stabbed with acupuncture needles that look, here, like instruments of torture.’
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Jason Briggs Various (2007 – 2017)
‘i work with porcelain to create objects. art objects, if you must. it’s up to you to label them: sculpture, fine art, fine craft, ceramic sculpture, figurative, abstract, surrealism, eroticism, non-traditional, biological, fucked-up, pornographic or, worst of all, decorative.’
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Doreen Garner A Fifteen Year Old Girl Who Would Never Dance Again (2017)
‘Garner speaks of her work as being in conversation with that of Harriet Washington, the author of Medical Apartheid. In her book, Washington gives the account of a fifteen-year-old enslaved girl who became the victim of W. H. Robert, a physician and instructor in Georgia. When the girl was brought to him with a minor injury, he decided to amputate her leg for his class. The surgeon told his students that amputation should be considered according to race and class, and had administered the amputation not because it was necessary but in order to teach a lesson to his students. This is the story that inspired Garner’s A Fifteen Year Old Girl Who Would Never Dance Again; A White Man In Pursuit of the Pedestal: a silicon, bloodied leg inlaid with beads and Swarovski crystals atop a rotating, metal operating table whose presentation conjures images of a car for sale at a dealership.’
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Sam Jackson Various (2018 – 2019)
‘Some are clearly supposed to represent a tattoo. Other writings on the face are language based thoughts; or scribblings in the same way Cy Twombly might utilise the line as a mode to form a personal language that also acts on a purely aesthetic level. They are texts that allow for something to take place, for the painting and viewer to communicate by using the subtle conventions we know: line, form, composition and colour; as well as more blatant digging, scrawling and marking of graffiti and doodling. These aspects of nonchalant daubing are important to me – they reveal an attitude not just from the characters, but also from within the painting’s actual construction. This is also interlinked with opposing words / sentences, which sets up a distancing between me and the audience. Its open to debate whether I agree with these statements, or whether they are personal to me or the character depicted. I like the ambiguity.’
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Natalia LL Consumer Art (1972 – 1975)
‘In the 1960s and 1970s, Natalia LL was one of the first artists to step forward and criticise conceptual art for excessive rationalisation and avoidance of physical sensuality. In Consumer Art she also refers to the imagery of popular culture, where consumption and erotic motifs are often paired. Probably the most notorious work by Natalia LL, Consumer Art presents models delighting in bananas, frankfurters or ice-cream. Obviously, this seemingly innocent activity acquires a strongly erotic edge. Combination of a “cold” film recording with a “hot” sensual motif stands for a rejection of the purely analytical character of conceptual art.’
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Jeff Burton Various (2012 – 2020)
‘Although Jeff Burton’s photographs leave almost everything to the imagination, they are records of an industry that certainly does not. Taken on the sets of porn movies, Burton’s images cleverly play with the idea of the explicit. Although the artist frames them so that sex is only ever suggested, it is, of course, taking place beyond the margins of his compositions.’
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Eriko Matsumura WebFare (2007)
‘90% of children between the age of 8 to 16 years old, have accidentally viewed unwanted websites. It is becoming popular for parents to set up internet filters (e-mail protection, pop-up blocking and chat room monitoring between others) which block unsuitable violent or adult websites. However, there are still a large number of websites which can easily pass through the filters and allow children to reach unsuitable material.
‘Eriko Matsumura’s WebFare is the dream tool for parents who want peek into their children’s web surfing. The application and product looks like an electric torch that parents can shine onto the computer screen. A halo will unpeel one after the other the websites recently visited by their child. It gives parents a glimpse into their child’s interests and surfing habits, rather than restricting their web access. Parents can then choose which topics they may want to discuss. As a result, WEBFARE can help parents to protect their children in their absence.’
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Ever The Contemplation of the Arrival III (2017)
‘Crayons on paper of 90gr’
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World of the Giantess Various (2014)
‘Andreas is the creator of a German forum called ‘The World of Giantess’ which explores a fetish for men being scaled down to the size of insects and women being a totally normal size inducing the notion of the female turning into giants and men becoming vulnerable objects of insignificance. I found Andreas through flickr where his computer generated images of cinematic scenes showing ant sized men run around the normal sized feet of women in an office space completely blew my mind. On further inspection I found out that Andreas manages a forum for a cross section of men who all share this fetish and express it though home-made fan art which they share among one another. Andreas’ work explores domestic settings of men trying to escape the attention of these gigantic women, running underneath desks naked and hiding underneath high heels. However the art exhibited on this blog from its various members all explore many different themes of the amazon woman/merciless man relationship.’
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Melissa Vogley Woods Various (2007 – 2009)
‘Woods’s videos take place in domestic, architectural and institutional environment all of which become fodder for her class of foot fetish revolt.’
Catch, 2019
Boxed, 2016
Peel, 2016
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Anne Imhof Sex (2019)
‘Imhof has explained that the title Sex refers to new, emergent frameworks for rethinking sex and gender identity, rather than to having sex, reproducing, or having sexual desire. Indeed, when one of her troupe members slipped off his shirt, donned a black mask, and descended a column like Saint Symeon the Stylite, I was initially fascinated: his was an ideal male body, like the ones I see and admire in magazines. But as he passed by, the lack of erotic charge was palpable; like the other bodies in the arena, this one felt a bit plastic. Sex is dramatic, even melodramatic, yet its drama is not sensual; it removes bodily urges from the mix. According to researchers, millennials are having significantly less sex than many previous generations. Teen pregnancy is down. Perhaps other forms of erotic activity or fantasy or interpersonal connection have taken priority. With her signifiers of millennial hipness and downplaying of carnality in favor of blank-faced ritual, Imhof has given this generation exactly what they deserve, which is also exactly what they want: a picture of themselves.’
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Thomas Hämén Asstral Traveler (2016)
‘Thomas Hämén sculpted coprolite (fossilized faeces from animals that lived millions of years ago) from a dinosaur that lived about 140 million years ago to create a device for anal stimulation, in an attempt to make us connect with geological or “deep time”.
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Leigh Ledare Pretend You’re Actually Alive (2002 – 2006)
Mom Spread with Red Heels, 2003
Mom Fucking in Mirror, 2002
Mom with Hand on Bed, 2006
Mom as Baby Jane, 2005
Mother and Catch 22, 2002
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Jennifer Chowdhury and Mehmet Sinan Ascioglu Intimate Game Controllers (2007)
‘Intimate Game Controllers, by Jennifer Chowdhury and Mehmet Sinan Ascioglu, is a platform where game controllers are built into undergarments so that players must physically touch one another to play. The woman’s controller is a bra with 6 sensors. The man’s controller has 6 sensors as well but in a pair of shorts. Man stands being woman and each has access to others sensors. The project will be presented at the ITP show on May 8 and 9, but with mannequins so visitors can try the interface out without having a partner with them.’
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Toshio Saeki Various (1979 – 2006)
‘An unusual and mysterious atmosphere that shrouds Saeki, and his isolation from the world undoubtedly enabled him to produce the work that he did, free and distant—a quality that is rare in our hyper-connected age. Despite Saeki’s influence in the underground scene (his first exhibition was in Paris in 1970), his work has still not received much critical investigation, either in Japan or abroad. This lack of attention is partly, of course, down to the content of his work; he digs into the darkest depths of the subconscious, creating glaringly authentic nightmare scenarios even Freud couldn’t dream up.’
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Mika Rottenberg Squeeze (2010)
‘Grinding industrial machinery and sweating bodies merge in a bizarre assembly line in Mika Rottenberg’s new video Squeeze (2010). The 20-minute piece runs on a loop, shifting between documentary footage of female factory workers in India producing gelatinous slabs of rubber, migrant workers in Arizona hacking heads of lettuce from their stalks with long blades and staged vignettes shot in several makeshift chambers in Rottenberg’s studio. The artist edits the footage in such a way that the point of view frequently shifts and physical distances seem to collapse, connecting all of the workers in a byzantine network of labor. For instance, the rubber workers in India thrust their arms into holes in the ground to receive manicures from a row of Asian women filmed in Rottenberg’s studio, where large women sweat, are squeezed between contracting walls and meditate, their energies seemingly harvested to fuel the pulverizing of lettuce, rubber and cakes of makeup that are then compressed into a repulsive new product.’
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Dimitris Stamatis, Pei-Ying Lin, and Špela Petrič Plant Sex Consultancy (2014)
‘Plant Sex Consultancy is exactly what its title suggests: a series of design interventions aimed at ‘augmenting’ the sex life of plants, through long discussions with ‘plant clients.’:
‘For all empathic and philosophical purposes, plants are the incomprehensible aliens living amongst us, which we experience daily but perceive through their ubiquity, their slow pace, immobility, at best as a source of food and their potential applicability to reduce our detrimental environmental impact. We see, taste, smell and touch the otherness of plants, but spend very little time daydreaming to comprehend it. And even if we did, we’d hardly find a point of identification, of justifiable commonality between humans and plants that would spark a comparison, which would release plant agencies from the murky bottom of the anthropocentric valorization of living beings.
‘Then, there is sex. In the abstract realm of biological sciences, which seeks commonality in processes across the living world, sexual reproduction stands out as a staple principle of natural selection. Using a gastronomy facsimile, sex results in genetic cocktails of individuals. It is one of the crucial steps in the recipes of species under pressure to suit the changing taste of the environment. This applies to all organisms, from bacteria to humans and, of course, plants.
‘We recognized the uncanniness of likening plant and human sexual reproduction as an agora to juxtapose conceptions of “unique” human cultural practices to cross-species biological necessities, and the design process, promoted as a widely applicable approach, to the limits of its meaningfulness.’
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Jung Yoonsuk 정윤석 Lash (2018)
‘A two-channel documentary video from a (probably Chinese) factory producing life-size sex dolls. The seductiveness of the image was the main attraction of the work: Hands touching artificial skin, pushing and pulling and tearing and cutting of silicone made skin substitutes, etc… The morbid and fetishistic attraction with skin and flesh was everywhere. The workers featured in the film remained silent, and most of the time they were also pictured as body parts: hand that shape matter, robot-like. Occasionally there was a glance of a factory worker at rest, sipping his noodle soup in between of pink silicone carcasses. The film documented how sex toy dolls are made, but it did not reveal anything about the working conditions or context of why this should be important to see or discuss. Lash did not make me feel to know anything about the artist: What is his position, interest, approach… only plastic flesh fetish.’
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Kevin Francis Gray Face-Off (2017)
‘High Polished Bronze, Automotive Paint and Wood.’
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Trevor Brown Various (1996 – 2017)
‘Brown’s paintings of funny, cute, but sinister doll-like creatures, lolitas and teddy bears inhabiting a bizarre world of medical, masochistic and macabre imagery seem to emanate from a perpetual Halloween twilight zone, where innocence is inextricably enmeshed with — but never fully corrupted by — evil. Yet even though this fascinating cocktail is an addictive passion for Brown’s fans, who religiously buy his paintings and books, it is definitely not everybody’s cup of tea. Over the years, the artist has received death threats and been accused of everything from pedophilia to Nazism, via Satanism and sadism. Reflecting the hysteria that Brown sometimes attracts, one reviewer said, “The toilet bowl inside this artist’s brain is overflowing with blood culled from a massive fetish orgy starring a horde of underage Japanese goth sluts for whom the more freakish, unimaginable terrain of human behavior is the norm.”’
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Kris Knight Various (2014 – 2015)
‘I think my interest in androgyny stems from looking and sounding quite feminine as a kid growing up in the country. I matured out of this stage in my later teens, but I can still remember the confusion others had (and how angry people got) when gender is blurred. My first series of works dealt with androgyny and gender neutrality because I rarely saw it portrayed from a rural perspective. Today my interest in neutrality goes beyond gender as I am much more interested in conveying ambiguity in terms of physiognomy, mood, atmosphere, and sex.’
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Mark Woods Various (2017)
‘Mark Woods produces highly elaborated artefacts that blur the boundaries between top end jewellery, fine arts, Fetish and items from a cabinet of curiosities ending in luxurious objects of desire. As the art critic, Mónica Sánchez-Argilés, says: “Woods’ sculptures seem to echo to perfection the fraudulent simulation phenomena of a society increasingly obsessed with glamour and pornography”.’
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Eli Craven Various (2016 – 2018)
‘Currently, I am returning to a thread of research about images unseen, restricted, hidden, or unwanted. I’m thinking about death and ritual, secret societies and the desire to see the unknown.’
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Jean Tinguely La Vittoria (1970)
‘Art claims to the machine the opposite of what it was invented for: the unproductive, the idle, the absurd, the random or amoral behavior. In the same vein, Jean Tinguely made in the 1950s his robotic, chaotic and, not rarely, self-destructive sculptures. In La Vittoria (1970) his desacralizing sense extends to the phallic cult, with an ephemeral monument that looks like a nod to the ancient Greco-Roman priapic processions or the Japanese Hounen Matsuri, but erected before the cathedral of Milan to stage a “sexual fire”: The virile symbol of fecundity consumed by fireworks, steamers and sirens of firemen.’
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Wei Dong Various (2010 – 2015)
‘A personal obsession with the female body is one of Wei Dong’s many complex interests. Growing up in China under the watchful eye of Mao’s red guard, sexual fantasies and freedoms were forcibly repressed. Socialist realism was the standard fair in the art academies of the time, and as a result, any hint of sexual or erotic expression was taboo. Upon entering the United States in 1991, Wei Dong’s preoccupation with the root of erotic desires as a young adult were given free reign over his canvases, resulting in grandiose explorations of the flesh.’
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Clementine Keith-Roach Belle Dam (2018)
‘Milk substitute trickles from the breasts of Belle Dam, while hands and feet reach out to the environs at all angles. Clementine says: ‘Just as the mother’s breast lactates at the infant’s cry, Belle Dam spurts arcs of milk substitute in response to the groan of the city.’’
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Shoplifter & Múm Nervescape (2013)
‘As a teenager, she couldn’t convince a hair stylist to colour or cut her hair the way she wanted. “So perhaps, my fetish has developed out of these unfulfilled desires for sculptural and more colourful looks,” says Shoplifter. In the 90s, the artist started out using brown hair for her sculptures but she soon turned to colourful synthetic hair extensions. She used them for their colour but also what they symbolised: the difference between high and low art and our own preconceptions about what they signify. “Hair represents the beast in us, and once it’s off the body, it’s so creepy,” she says. “It’s a memory of who you are.”‘
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Méret Oppenheim My Nurse (1936)
‘Dinner is served – and it is a pair of white high heels. Displayed sole-up, on a silver platter, and trussed like an oven-ready chicken, they are white (i.e. pure), but scuffed (i.e. dirty). Our reflection bounces back to us from the rim of the silver tray, implicating us in a bizarre cannibalistic ritual. The symbolism unfolds before us like the plot of a sinister novel. The artist has encapsulated nearly every imaginable sexual fetish. Bondage is perhaps the most obvious, but of course, there is the foot fetish. The oval form of the tray and deep crevice between the shoes is vaguely vaginal (and, especially in a dining context, hints at oral sex). The white shoes and their scuffed appearance might reference the Madonna/whore complex. Oppenheim knew her Freud backwards and forwards. Her references are intentional.’
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Will McBride Various (1972 – 2018)
‘Will McBride was an American artist known for his black-and-white photographs documenting youth culture in postwar Germany. His work remains controversial for its frank and explicit depiction of sexuality. Many consider McBride’s working method as a forerunner to the visceral self-documentation seen later in the photographs of Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Wolfgang Tillmans.’
*
p.s. Hey. ** _Black_Acrylic, Ha ha. Well, well, well! Greatness! Everyone, Excellent news from _Black_Acrylic for your weekend and, well, forever even. To wit, ‘Happy to announce the inaugural Play Therapy show with Ben ‘Jack Your Body’ Robinson is now online here via Tak Tent Radio! My dulcet tones introduce Chicago house, power electronics, Hi NRG, Italo and more besides.’ See you there by osmosis? ** David Ehrenstein, I’m pretty sure he did. I think I’ve mentioned before that he seriously dated Mary Martin who apparently came very close to being my mother. ** Misanthrope, I just knew that post would hit somebody’s spot. Ah, meds plus/minus short term amnesia. It might be partly psychological, but if I don’t take my milligrams of Melatonin every night, I’m dead. Or the opposite of dead, more like. Not that I need to even say this, but, dude, do not buy LPS a car. Holy moly what a bad idea. ** h (now j), Hi. Indian dinner got pushed to tonight because I forgot I had a deadline. Oops, well, I hope their deadline was extendable. Is travelling within New York state a no-no? We can travel within the EU for the moment, and Zac and I are going to train to Koln to go to an amusement park there soonish barring the borders re-closing. Enjoy your weekend as the weekend allows. ** Ferdinand, Hi, F. Good, thanks. I’m behind on my email, but I see yours there, and I’ll get to it this weekend, thanks. Oh, a share, cool, okay … Everyone, Ferdinand has a share for you. Take it away, Ferdinand: ‘I want to share this gayadult archival podcast Ask any buddy with the blog.. havent seen the compilation film out of which the podcast has sprung (headsup it should be available on youtube ) butheres the podcast which looks at each old gay adult film individually which feautured in the gay adult archival compilation film. Podcast link here: or You know what just type ASK ANY BUDDY on apple podcasts or spotify or stitch (whatever that is) Should be fun!’ ** Bill, Ha ha. Your preview piece was even more great the second and third times I watched it. Totally ace, sir. ** Max B, Hi, Max! Happy you came back. Cool, thanks for the fill in. Obviously best of luck galore with the bachelor degree completing. God, yeah, I have a lot of musician friends who have had their futures and bank accounts totally fucked by this. Even over here where things are pretty open again, music gigs are still a far away dream. So sorry. Great, thank you a lot for hooking me up with your work. I’ll heavily indulge this weekend. Everyone, Get to know the work of Max B by hearing him out and joining me in a solid listening session where he indicates. Max B: ‘Some music I made a year or two ago with a friend is getting put out by an english label over the course of the summer, here’s some.’ Check it out, folks, why don’t you? ** Steve Erickson, Yes, indeed. Oh, shit, about your anxiety reaction. Crank some brutal techno and dance it out? That’s worked for me a few times. The Portland thing is ultra-awful and spooky. I guess try not to jump to the most apocalyptic conclusion since it’s out of your personal control? I realise that seems to be a tall order over there at the moment. Sympathetic stalker films almost seem to be becoming a genre unto themselves. ** Paul Curran, Hi, Paul! Thanks, man. I’m loving the stuff you’ve been posting on FB of late, doncha know. Great, thank you about the Setagaya Murders post. That would be treasure. Zac and I discuss our longing to go to Japan every time we see each other. Obviously, it just depends on how the COVID thing goes both here and there. So we’re watching and waiting. Surely not before Nintendo Land opens at Universal Osaka because we’re both almost literally dying to go to it. Thank you so much about ‘ZDB’, that means really a lot. And I’m glad Diarmuid’s book pleased. Wow, your kid turns 13! That’s so old. In the good sense. Time is intense. It would be a thrill if he likes ‘God Jr.’ although chill if he doesn’t. Yeah, I would love to meet him as a non-baby when I finally get down there. Maybe he (and you) would be down for Nintendo Land? Great weekend, maestro. ** Corey Heiferman, I would guess an extraterrestrial anthropologist would look at those models and ask themselves a billion hugely critical questions. Obviously, I’m imagining they would have gigantic brains like we used to think back in the ’60s. If the muse ribs, you know what you’ve got to to do, man. I think Bill is one of those lucky ones who can see the comments, at least most of the time, so that should work. ** Right. This weekend you get another one of my thematic post thingeroonies. See you on Monday.
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