The Sensual and the Sensational
Sandra Small Gallery explores 'The Erotic Gaze'
Sandra Small Gallery's current show 'The Erotic Gaze,' organized by independent curator (and regular ÆQAI contributor) Daniel Brown, seeks to explore the shift of eroticized art from that which has been made for the “male gaze,” to that which is currently being created by a wider range of artists for a broader audience.
The notion of the “male gaze” came out of feminist art theory in the 1970s. Looking back through a centuries-old procession of images, feminists charged that, since pretty much the dawn of time, art had been made by male artists for a male audience. They also purported that the “male gaze” permeated popular culture, and this is arguably still very much the case—just watch a few music videos or look at fashion advertising. Artists, both male and female, have been complicating the matter for decades, and 'The Erotic Gaze' provides some compelling examples.
Among the works by the six artists featured in the exhibition, some are straightforward, such as graphite drawings by Myrix, which offer homoerotic nude males so polished they seem lifted from the pages of a magazine. Others are more subtle, like the lush figurative watercolors of Todd Reynolds, some of which feature androgynous figures, and others that seem innocuous on the surface yet carry titles such as Girl Touching Herself and Afterglow.
Donna Talerico addresses the politics of the public gaze in her expressionistic paintings of café scenes. Talerico's lone figures and couples occasionally bring to mind Edward Hopper, especially her La Robe Rouge, in which a woman in a bright red dress stands behind a man seated with his back to her. The painting creates the most tension of all Talerico's works in the show. Two of Talerico's paintings feature women in public talking on cell phones, suggesting that people-watching (and displaying oneself in public) has moved beyond visual voyeurism to include eavesdropping and verbal exhibitionism.
Kim Rae Taylor and Jamie Oberschlake utilize paint to deconstruct the tradition of the classical nude. Worlds away from smooth, polished surfaces, both combine thick paint application and mixed media collage that cause the viewer to be alternately swept up in content and seduced by form. For example, Taylor painted Repose—a figure with an androgynous face and hairstyle, large hands, and generous breasts—with lush brushwork. The composition continually draws the eye back to the figures' ample breasts terminating in large nipples. The rich color and paint application is so compelling that viewers may find themselves studying this section for quite some time—not because it depicts breasts, but because of the tantalizing paint, chunky in spots, frosting-smooth in others. Of the artists in the exhibition, Taylor most directly engages the history of women as painting subjects. For instance, her painting Hair Series 0, which depicts a seated young woman, legs sprawled, contemplatively staring off in the distance, puts a contemporary spin on the nineteenth-century convention of the woman in reverie.
Even more so than Taylor's, Oberschlake's paintings wrap up the viewers' experience in form. His figures, almost completely removed from academic, anatomical correctness, verge on pure abstraction. Yet, we recognize the vertical shape in Untitled as a standing nude, and the horizontal one in Pregnancy/Intimacy as a reclining figure. His figures seem to both melt and meld—paint mimics drooping or deconstructed flesh, yet carries structure and marries the form to the surface. One is taken by surprise when, first captivated by Oberschlake's masterful technique, thoughts shift to reflecting on the physicality of the human body and its imperfections, and the ease with which this fascination arises.
Dawn Hunter's acrylic paintings unflinchingly transport the viewer to a strange world of sex parties, lesbian shows, swinger gatherings, and other situations that both fascinate and repel. In them, men watch women, women perform for men, men watch other men with women. Her painting Hard-Core Pussy, for example, depicts a man in a sailor uniform engaging in sexual activity with a woman outdoors as a group of men in various costumes watch. In A Touch of Lesbian, women dance with women, some in lingerie, some dressed as men in tuxedos and top hats. In Hunter's work, rarely, if ever, are women the spectators, but rather serve as the spectacle. In this way, her work most effectively engages, and questions, the show's theme of the erotic gaze.
Like the act of voyeurism, which is purely visual without physical contact or resolution, 'The Erotic Gaze' left me feeling unsatisfied, which is not to say it isn't a success—any inquiry into gender and eroticism in art, if done thoroughly, should leave one with more questions than answers.
