No Shame in the Slutverse, Please

Perusing the lust archive of the Internet, to contextualize Drink Me! and S.L.UT.S, I watched Andy Warhol’s Flesh (1968), or simply Flesh, directed by Paul Morrissey, yesterday. As a celebration of the glorious Joe Dallesandro, the film is a masterpiece (otherwise it is mediocre at best), and for its delicate investigation of sexual repression and fluidity, lust, and sex work, it was surprisingly current. (The patriarchal display, which is Anora, please step aside.) Dallesandro plays a rent boy and we follow him in a day of his life: waking up to his wife telling him to go to work, feeding their baby, searching for clients on the streets, getting a blow-job from an ex girlfriend, meeting with johns, one who makes him do poses from famous sculptures Rodin The Thinker, for instance, another who wants to be assured that their relationship and his art collection is unique (everyone wants to feel special with Joe, who is mostly blasé or hurrying things up) and reads him smut out loud. The latter professes that they are not queers, but asks Joe to move in with him. It is existentialist and mundane at the same time, and in each character, narcissism and vulnerability coexist, like in many Warhol productions. When another rent boy asks if he’s straight, Joe explains energetically:

Nobody is straight. It’s not about being straight or being not straight. You just do whatever you have to do. It’s hard to learn how to do that, but once you have it down don’t even worry about it no more. Do you consider yourself abnormal? What other people think doesn’t matter; if you have to care about what the straight people think, you are not in the bag.

Iconic. The other responds: “I care, I guess it’s because I am starting out.” A certain degree of cagey-ness might be expected as gay sex was criminalized in New York City in 1968. But, the sexual fluidity matches the Gen Z mindset that reigns in pop culture today, and in Flesh‘s slow drawn-out shots—interrupted by flash frames, igniting mind and body—lust, or fantasy, for flesh, drugs, money, and validation, and their everyday expressions have precedence over sexual acts, or gender for that matter. Refreshingly, there are no vaginas, but plenty frontal and rear nudes and close-ups of Dallesandro (and conversations between womxn, Bechdel test, passed)—yes, please! In the last scene, Joe falls asleep beside his wife, who is entangled with her girlfriend. They don’t care what you think. (Watch it free on YouTube.)

S.L.U.T.S.: Sovereign Lust Undoing Total Shame at The Slip

S.L.U.T.S through its reclamation of the word aims to change the prevailing world-order of desire, body-image, and of sexual relations—to omit shame. (With Pope Francis’s recent passing, RIP, in addition to lauding his very important efforts to support migrants in need, do not forget to critically review Catholicism’s oppressive patriarchal structures and their contribution to sexual shame.) S.L.U.T.S curator, Syd Krochmalny, who has centred an arm of his practice on exploring his former profession as a stripper, presents, in the large-scale drawing, The Measure of All Things, a scene of himself surrounded by women. “Supposedly, I’m in it,” one of his lovers whispered to me at the opening. We concluded, however, that the women’s faces all look eerily alike, with eye and hair color differing, so we couldn’t figure out which one. Two men, both Krochmalny, with their backs to the viewer (who are actually very similar looking to Joe in Flesh—same build, same rear, same perfect floppy hairstyle), are the center of grabbing arms, static eyes, and adoring smiles from the women around them. The female gaze on steroids, perhaps? With phallic and boudoir, or brothel, connotations, red velvet curtains hanging by a spear frame this piece of male and female fantasy.

Desire sits more darkly in the corners of Anna Sofie Jespersen’s mind, in her work I Should Have Gone with You to See Spiral Jetty—a towering dick and a phone playing Weezer “Island in the Sun” against a lush green landscape, flesh tones, and teeth. The regretful title indicates that she was probably better off not going to see Robert Smythson’s land art piece with this particular penis in hand (or mouth). In her statement, she writes: “I’m just trying to make images as accurately off my nervous system as I can. I don’t even know what half of them mean. I’m not saying anything.” Just by putting these ideas on the canvas, she is making the radical statement of being free. A throwback to Craigslist personals—oh how beautiful they were, before the purity laws SESTA and FOSTA led to their demise, fucking us all—is Detex’s My Master (2013) with a poetic plea from a sub asking for a master found on Craigslist personals, embroidered on silk: “I want no identity but that of your footdog,” is one of my favorite lines. Very demure, I hope they found what they were looking for.

In 1967, Valerie Solana’s published her SCUM Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men) which unapologetically describes the inner workings of the patriarchy—blaming men for destroying the world—and attempts to restore order by dictating that men should be subservient to women, before they are completely replaced by machines. (I suggested Krochmalny add the manifesto to the press release—we are all friends in the slutverse.) Solana’s really meant business; she shot Andy Warhol for not reading one of her plays. Similarly, in S.L.U.T.S six artists target different aspects of sex and pleasure, attempting to eradicate shame, restoring reliance on intuition.

The Slip, 25 Peck Slip, New York, NY 10038. 

Drink Me! at Spielzeug

Drink Me! actually screams HEAR ME! Upon entering the space, sound spilled from at least three artworks. Metallic sounds from Ava Marzulli’s The Miracle of Life kinetic artwork installed behind a wall: a hidden motor, microphone, and speakers (I guess?) accompanying visible latex, on the outside. A buzzing from four animatronic cats haphazardly moving in Sophie Jung’s shrine-like installation T ACHE ME D OWN, incorporating, among other things, found photographs, and a tablecloth. Jung’s work is a sophisticated portrayal of longing and friendship, with a hint of rivalry. Then there is Atanaz Babinchak’s 5-minute video work Study for Kama IV in all its queer scatological glory, on view for the first time in the show. Just like when Alice fell down the rabbit hole, and had to search for clues to return home, the art works in Drink Me! lead the visitor in thinking about lust and the body through new eyes. Qingyuan Deng, a regular Cultbytes writer, penned the press release, my favorite line, reflects the intensity of the show:

Luckily my mother, a sex ed curriculum designer who secretly hates sex, had given me some Chinese pills with secretive ingredients that promise to repair post-ejaculation exhaustion. I could masturbate again after taking the pill, and I did.

Amongst the strongest works is Ellie Krakow, whose sculpture and gouache, and pencil drawings bring severed body parts, pieces of medical equipment, and care equipment into eerie nature mortes. Her sculpture of a tube is placed on a plastic baby changing station, common in public bathrooms. Extensions of the body, yet alien and uninviting. Maia Del Estal’s Open Wide series also engages with the suggestive. They are annotated books, a 1995 Pablo Picasso monograph, America the Beautiful in the World of Robert F. Kennedy, a Phillips Evening Sale catalog where the artist has painted nudes and written messages like: “open your legs like a butterfly” and “Ephemeral but Permanent” on pages throughout, placing a woman’s touch within historical recollectons that objectify the female body. Gallerist Evan Karas spent some time in Europe before graduating with a BFA from NYU and starting the gallery, some of the artists he met while living in Prague, others online. At Spielzeug, housed in his Bushwick loft-style studio, he will continue to put on exhibitions and host art events. Keep an eye on them.

Spielzeug, 27 Arion Place, 11206, NY NY. Schedule your visit.

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