“All human desire is poised on an axis of paradox, absence and presence its poles…”
— Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet
Overview
Artists
Credits
The body has long been a subject of the visual arts to communicate desire, often through patriarchal, normative and binaristic modes of interpreting both gender and sexuality. As a malleable medium, the body proclaims much by its appearance as well as its nonappearance. Eroticism is also an elusive, subjective and dynamic conceptual yet corporeal experience. Intervening in a long tradition of the nude body’s association with eroticism, artists today are using the body as a charged and fluid meaning-making agent. The first of a recurring exhibition series highlighting living artists, F*CK ART: the body & its absence explores nuanced evocations of the erotic body.
Working across mediums such as performance, sculpture, film, photography, ceramics, painting, drawing, fiber arts, and new media, F*CK ART brings together eighteen artists who share the collective urge to uninhibitedly explore the contours of desire and arousal in our current moment. The works of art on view play with art history’s preoccupation with the nude figure and rejection of the pornographic. Through varying examinations and meditations, the exhibition explores the body’s role in subjectively registering intimacy, fantasy, and longing.
CAJSA VON ZEIPEL delves into identity, gender and queerness while interrogating ideals of classicism through sculpture. Culling from sci-fi and fantasy aesthetics, she constructs her figures in brightly colored silicone and adorns them with dollar store accoutrement turned glistening treasure. In resolute assertion of femme visibility and sex positive provocation, these beings celebrate a world of their own creation. Von Zeipel’s work is currently on view at ARKEN Museum in Ishøj and at the Rubell Museum in Miami. Other recent exhibitions include those at Peres Projects, Berlin; CF Hill, Stockholm; the Athens Biennale; Copenhagen Contemporary, Denmark; Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Germany; Company Gallery, New York; Andrehn-Schiptjenko, Stockholm; Karma International, Zurich; Konstmuseum, Kristinhamn and Arcadia Missa, London. Her work is in numerous public and private collections such as the Onassis Foundation, Rubell Foundation, Museum of Modern Art Warsaw, Faurschou Collection, 21C Museum, Modern Museet, Borås Museum of Arts and Eskilstuna Museum of Art.
COYOTE PARK (he/they) is a 2Spirit, (Korean, German, Yurok Native) artist from Honolulu, Hawai’i that currently lives in Tongva Territory (Los Angeles). They are a transgender artist that centers their practice in photography, writing, performance, painting, producing, and creative direction as modes of storytelling. Park’s work aims to create queer utopia by photographing spaces of comfort, togetherness, and liberation. Park merges their written work with their passion for image making through their photo series entitled “All Kin is Blood Kin” (2020 – current) surrounding themes of chosen family, rebirth, and intimacy. Their intention in all that they create is for it to be a pathway to healing and dreaming up new worlds.
NICKI GREEN is a transdisciplinary artist working primarily in clay. Her sculptures, ritual objects and various flat works explore topics of history preservation, conceptual ornamentation and aesthetics of otherness. Often constructing heavily ornamented painted glaze surfaces and experimental, organic building techniques, Green explores material and object integrity by utilizing transness as a lens with which to look at the world. Green has exhibited her work internationally, notably at the New Museum, New York; Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris, France, and The Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco. She has contributed texts to numerous publications including Transgender Studies Quarterly, Fermenting Feminism, Copenhagen and The Center for Arts Research publications, University of Oregon, Eugene. Green is a 2022 Nancy Graves Foundation Grantee, and was a 2020 Art Matters Fellow, and in 2019, a finalist for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s SECA Award, and a recipient of an Arts/Industry Residency from the John Michael Kohler Art Center, among other awards and residencies. Originally from New England, she completed her BFA in sculpture from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2009 and her MFA in Art Practice from the University of California, Berkeley in 2018. Green is currently a visiting professor and artist in residence at California State University, Long Beach Center for Contemporary Ceramics.
JIMENA CROCERI is a multimedia artist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her artistic practice is characterized by intention and experiment, by resistance and fluidness. Adopting a laboratory-like method, which isn’t either rational or sterile but more curious than precise, her work consists of various elements that are all protagonists: time, chance, collaboration, correlation and coincidence. Using both daily materials and naturally occurring elements, her work probes points of flexibility between gestures, rituals and performances. Recent residences and prices include the 2020 Pernod Ricard Fellowship at Villa Vassilieff in Paris, the exchange program «Coincidencia» by Pro-Helvetia in Switzerland (2019), a residency at Bar Project in Barcelona (2019) and the residency program FLORA ars+natura in Bogotá (2018). In 2017, Croceri conducted field research in the Brazilian Amazon forest, thanks to a grant from the Oxenford Collection. Croceri’s performances, workshops and exhibitions have been hosted, among others, by MUNTREF Museum (BsAs, 2022), Ming Contemporary Art Museum (Shangai, 2022), Centro Cultural kirchner (BsAs, 2021), Piedras Gallery (Buenos Aires, 2020), Raven Row gallery (London, 2019), Ausstellungsraum Klingental (Basel, 2021 & 2019), Cabaret Voltaire ( Zürich, 2019), Museum of Modern Art of Buenos Aires (BsAs, 2021, 2019 & 2014), Museum of Latin American Art (Buenos Aires, 2017), Faena Art Center (Buenos Aires, 2017 and 2015), and HFBK (Dresden, 2016). Work on view: El aire entre nosotrxs tiene forma de hueso or The air between us is in the shape of a bone (2020).
ALINA PEREZ received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA in Painting and Printmaking at the Yale University of Art in New Haven. She was a participant at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2017, and has attended residencies at the Fine Arts Works Center in Provincetown, the OxBow School of Art in Michigan, and the Vermont Studio Center. Her work was recently exhibited at the Taubman Museum of Art, Virginia; Atlanta Contemporary, Georgia; Deli Gallery, New York; Arcadia Missa, London; Rachel Uffner, New York; and Company Gallery, New York. Perez is represented by Deli Gallery, New York.
MARIE KARLBERG lives and works in New York. In 2013 Karlberg founded M/L Artspace with artist Lena Henke. Karlberg has recently performed at Elevation1049, Gstaad; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; and Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst & Medien, oGraz. She has staged solo exhibitions at Bonny Poon, Paris; Plymouth Rock, Zurich; Tramps, New York; Marbriers 4, Geneva and Reena Spaulings Fine Arts, New York. Karlberg has recently participated in group shows such as “Legally Blonde”, Downs & Ross, New York; “Ab auf die Insel!”, Kunstmuseum; Luzern; IL NUOVO III,”Etablissement d’en face, Brussels; The 9th Berlin Biennale”, Berlin; “Freak Out”, Greene Naftali, New York. Karlberg performed in plays at the Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin; the Whitney Museum of Art, New York; and MoMA, New York. Karlberg’s work is included in the collections of Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris, Paris; and Laurenz-Stiftung Schaulager, Münchenstein, Switzerland, among others.
KAYODE OJO received a BFA from the School of Visual Arts. He currently lives and works in New York. Select exhibitions include: “Legally Blonde,” Downs & Ross, New York; “Lucky for Men,” Bortolami Gallery, New York; “Never Been Kissed,” Praz Dellavelade, Los Angeles (2019); “You dressed him like me?,” Giardino Segreto, Milan, Italy; “Equilibrium,” Martos Gallery, New York (2018); “Betrayal,” Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris, France; “Closer,” Sweetwater, Berlin; “Zoe Leonard, Kayode Ojo,” curated by Laura Hunt, Paula Cooper Gallery, New York (2018); “Life and Limbs,” curated by Anne-Sophie Berger, Swiss Institute, New York; “Invisible Man,” Martos Gallery, New York.
CHERRY BRICE JR. is a Brooklyn-born, Port-au-Prince-raised, and Harvard-educated writer, pornographer, and filmmaker, whose work has screened from Berlin, to Mexico City, to Port-au-Prince. Dead-set on escaping the white world’s hall of conceptual mirrors, cherry creates time-based works of smog, smegma, and smut. cherry lived in Haiti until the age of eleven and graduated from Harvard College with an A.B. in Economics. cherry is the host, curator, and creator of CineSymposia—a radical film screening series and installation piece at Anthology Film Archives—and Ace of Shade—a regularly-sold-out monthly comedy show at New York City’s Duplex Cabaret Theatre. In addition to the above, cherry’s work has been supported, presented, and distributed by institutions including The Museum of Modern Art, The New York Foundation for the Arts, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, The Millennium Film Workshop, and The Film-Makers’ Cooperative—on whose board cherry currently serves.
CLIFFORD PRINCE KING is an artist living and working in New York and Los Angeles. King documents his intimate relationships in traditional, everyday settings that speak on his experiences as a queer black man. In these instances, communion begins to morph into an offering of memory; it is how he honors and celebrates the reality of layered personhood. Within King’s images are nods to the beyond. Shared offerings to the past manifest in codes hidden in plain sight, known only to those who sit within a shared place of knowledge. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at Light Work, Syracuse (2021); No Moon, Los Angeles (2021); and STARS, Los Angeles (2020). Public collections holding his work include the Hammer Museum, ICA Miami, Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Long Beach, Los Angeles County Museum of Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Art, and The Studio Museum in Harlem.
JUSTIN YOON is a Brooklyn based painter. Early childhood memories of American junk food, late night old Hollywood movies on the TV, and listening to jazz in the car with his family on long drives significantly affected him to create a world of romantic melancholia, synthetic colors, and casual lostness of being. With no specific emotions provoked, the group of characters reoccur over and over in a deeply synthetic yet ambiguous dream-like landscape, continuing on this never ending “Highschool Reunion”. The viewer becomes a part of this experience, which is vaguely both universal yet deeply personal. Justin holds a B.F.A in Illustration from Parsons School for Design, NY. His work has been exhibited at Anat Ebgi Gallery, Shelter Gallery, Hannah Traore Gallery, Governors Island Art Fair, Felix Art fair, and more. Upcoming shows include an online solo with Taymour Grahne Projects (London, UK), a group show with Museum of Sex (New York, NY), and two solos with Mindy Solomon Gallery (Miami, FL) and Anat Ebgi (Los Angeles, CA). Justin’s work has been published in Math Magazine, Lezs Magazine, and more.
PACIFICO SILANO is a photo based artist whose work is an exploration of print culture, the circulation of imagery and LGBTQ identity. Born in Brooklyn, NY, he received his MFA in Photography from the School of Visual Arts. He recently had a 2 location solo show open at Fragment Gallery & Rubber-Factory in NYC. His other solo exhibitions include The Bronx Museum of The Arts, The Houston Center for Photography, Light Work, Baxter Street CCNY, Melanie Flood Projects, Stellar Projects and Monti8 in Italy. Selected Group exhibitions include A Trillion Sunsets: A Century of Image Overload, Curated by David Campany, at The International Center For Photography, Fantasy America, Curated by Jose Diaz at The Andy Warhol Museum, reGeneration4: The Challenges for Photography and its Museum of Tomorrow, Musée de l’Elysée, Lausanne, CH, Divina Comedia, Curated by Pedro Slim, Museo Universitario del Chopo, Mexico City, MX and the traveling museum show Art AIDS America. Aperture, Artforum, The New Yorker and The Washington Post have all reviewed his work. Silano’s awards include the Aaron Siskind Foundation’s Individual Photographer’s Fellowship, Finalist for the Aperture Foundation Portfolio Prize and the 2019 Bronx Museum of The Arts Block Gallery Residency. His book “I Wish I Never Saw The Sunshine” published by Loose Joints was recently shortlisted for the Rencontres Arles Prix du Livre prize and the The Paris Photo / Aperture Foundation Shortlist for First Book Prize. His work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Modern Art.
VICTORIA DUGGER is a visual artist who lives and works in Athens, Georgia. Her practice spans painting, mixed media works, and sculpture. Working across these forms, she produces objects that blur accepted categories, exploring novel modes of self-expression and embodiment. She dissects her identity as a Black, disabled woman through a blend of playful compositions and grotesque imagery. Dugger is currently an MFA candidate at the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia. She had her debut solo show Out of Body with Sargent’s Daughters in July 2021. Other recent solo presentations include Mind the Body, Lyndon House Arts Center, Athens, GA (2017); and Saccharine, Container Gallery, Columbus State University, Columbus, GA (2015).
TAO SIQI’s practice of painting originates from her seeking of metaphors hidden under the surface of an object. The positive and negative grounds of an object intrigue her to explore its emotional undercurrent on the canvas. The unusual subjects in Tao’s paintings – the fountain in a haze of dusty blue, the softness of the metal weapon, and the melting snowman – transcend their signifiers, and reflect the tension between reality and illusion. Rooting in her keen observation and sensitive perception of the times we live in, her works aim to trigger personal emotional experiences through the construction, extension and deconstruction of images. Tao Siqi was born in Wuhan, Hubei province, China in 1994, and currently lives and works in Shanghai. She graduated from Hubei Institute of Fine Art with a BA in painting in 2016. Her exhibitions include solo exhibition “Tender Thorns” at Capsule Shanghai (Shanghai, China, 2021) and “Transient” at chi K11 Art Space (Wuhan, China, 2015), and group exhibitions “Mouthed Echoes” (Lyles & King, New York, USA, 2022), “Indoor Weather”, curated by Lu Xiangyi and Wang Shiying (Light Palette Through Time and Space – 2022 Caochangdi Young Artists Group Exhibition, Beijing, China, 2022), “Nine Lives” (Fortnight Institute, New York, USA, 2021), “IMPORT-EXPORT” (Import Export Project, Locarno, Switzerland, 2019), “Right Behind Your Eyes”, curated by Sarah Faux (Capsule Shanghai, Shanghai, China, 2019), “The Apple Incident” (Dream Co., Beijing, China, 2018), “On Drawing: Visibility of Power” curated by Lu Mingjun (J: Gallery, Shanghai, China, 2017) and “Chūn rì dì xìan” (RS_PROJECTS, Wuhan, China, 2016) among others.
MOTOKO ISHIBASHI received her MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London in 2015, her BFA in Painting at Slade School of Fine Art, London in 2013 (with First Class Honours), and a BA in Aesthetics and Science of Arts: Philosophy at Keio University, Tokyo in 2010. Focused predominantly on painting, Ishibashi uses online sourced imagery as inspiration for the exploration of gender within digital cultures. Her practice also includes installation and performance. Ishibashi’s work has appeared in the following recent exhibitions, some of which she was also involved in curating: COPE at no gallery, NY (2022), Salon at GUTS gallery, London (2022), Beginning of the end at Schwabinggrad, Munich (2021), Assholes at V.O curations, London (2021), Agitations: stirred portraits at Courtyard Hiroo, Tokyo (2020), The Sound of Rhubarb at Lady Helen, London (2019), Rachel Is at Pact, Paris (2019), Seraphita at Polansky Gallery, Prague (2018), and 2:00 at Fig. Tokyo (2018).
PIXY LIAO is an artist who was born and raised in Shanghai, China and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Liao has participated in exhibitions and performances internationally, including the Fotografiska, Rencontres d’Arles in Arles, Asia Society, National Gallery of Australia, etc. She is a recipient of the NYFA Fellowship in photography, Santo Foundation Individual Artist Awards, Jimei x Arles International Photo Festival Madame Figaro Women Photographers Award, En Foco’s New Works Fellowship, and LensCulture Exposure Awards, etc. She has done artist residencies at Light Work, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Center for Photography at Woodstock, University of Arts London, School of Visual Arts, Pioneer Works, and Camera Club of New York. Liao holds an MFA in photography from the University of Memphis.
CASEY KAUFFMANN received her MFA from The University of Southern California and her Bachelor of Arts from The Evergreen State College in Washington. Kauffmann’s work has been featured in publications such as Artnet, Artillery, LAWeekly, The New Yorker, I-D Vice, and Hyperallergic. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in galleries such as Transfer Gallery, Human Resources, the Brand Library in Glendale, Lyles and King, Coaxial, Arebyte, Cirrus, and more. Kauffmann’s collage Instagram project @uncannysfvalley, which she started in 2014, features digital collage works and GIFs created using only her iPhone. The pieces Kauffmann posts to this account are an ever-accumulating collection of material from all corners of the internet, sourced from Tumblr, Instagram, and Google. This Instagram account and body of work has been exhibited in many galleries, written about in a number of esteemed publications, and eventually led to her admission to the MFA program at the University of Southern California. Kauffmann’s drawing practice functions as an inquiry into representation of femme emotion and hysteria in both art history and popular culture.
ERIN M. RILEY’s meticulously crafted, large-scale tapestries depict intimate, erotic, and psychologically raw imagery that reflects upon relationships, memories, fantasies, sexual violence, and trauma. Collaging personal photographs, images sourced from the internet, newspaper clippings, and other ephemera to create her compositions, the Brooklyn-based weaver exposes the range of women’s lived experiences and how trauma weighs on the search for self-identity. In her review of Riley’s most recent solo exhibition, The Consensual Reality of Healing Fantasies at P·P·O·W, Roberta Smith of the New York Times wrote, “Her richly variegated colors and complex, arresting scenes take full advantage of tapestry’s stitch-by-stitch autonomy.” Riley received her BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design and an MFA from the Tyler School of Art. Her work has been included in solo and group exhibitions at P·P·O·W, New York; Galerie Julien Cadet, Paris; Kohn Gallery, Los Angeles; Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden; The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery at Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs; Gana Art Gallery, Seoul; among others. Riley is the recipient of a United States Artists Fellowship Grant, 2021 and an American Academy of Arts & Letters Art Purchase Prize, 2021 and has completed residencies at MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire and the Museum of Art and Design, New York. Her work will be featured in 52 Artists: A Feminist Milestone opening at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in June 2022 and manifesto of fragility, the 16th Lyon Biennale of Contemporary Art, in September 2022.
ALEXANDRA NEUMAN is an interdisciplinary artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Drawing on ideas from postcolonial theory and multi-species feminism, her work focuses on positioning human being as an ecological process rather than as an individual body or self. She received a BFA in Visual Arts and Anthropology from Sam Fox School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis (2015) and an MFA in Visual Arts and Speculative Design at University of California, San Diego (2021). She is a past participant of the Arteles Residency in Haukijarvi, Finland, the PRAKSIS Residency in Oslo, Norway, and the Saas-Fee Summer Institute of Art in Berlin. Her films have shown at Anthology Film Archives, Museum of the Moving Image, and the Eyeslicer. She is a Webby Award Honoree as well as the recipient of the Russell Foundation Grant and the Initiative for Digital Exploration of Arts and Sciences (IDEAS) grant at Calit2. She recently published a book and oracle deck with Onomatopee Projects in Eindhoven, Netherlands.
CURATORS
Eve Arballo, Curator Emily Shoyer, Consulting Curator
