| The image Porn Cover-Ups is a reflection about what happens when you delete the human body performing the actual porn or sex acts and leave just a trace of what might have been or is: objects like socks or a ring, the setting with a sofa or a cheap interior. “In this way,” the Swedish graphic designer Nicklas Hultman says, “the viewer is forced to use his or her imagination, and give the left out parts a substance. A sometimes much more hardcore pornographic content than there really was.” |  |
Nicklas Hultman – Petra Dokken
The image Porn Cover-Ups is a reflection about what happens when you delete the human body performing the actual porn or sex acts and leave just a trace of what might have been or is: objects like socks or a ring, the setting with a sofa or a cheap interior. “In this way,” the Swedish graphic designer Nicklas Hultman says, “the viewer is forced to use his or her imagination, and give the left out parts a substance. A sometimes much more hardcore pornographic content than there really was.”
For Nicklas Hultman, sex and porn are two different expressions for similar activities. In a sense, the artist legitimates the pornographic image since Porn Cover-Ups could be hung in the office without being offensive to anyone. The original images are deliberately picked from the internet and so could also be recognized by anyone who has surfed for porn themselves.
“Porn is in color and sex is in black and white. The first is more blatant and obvious; the latter is more emotional and sensitive…Sex and porn are universal. It is something that we all consume in one way, or another, always have and always will,” he says. His work is multidisciplinary. Whether it is an art project, an ad campaign, running a nightclub or performing, Nicklas Hultman is an intuitive artist. To him, an unfinished project was never a project. He is similarly productive and sometimes it is not until afterwards that he knows where it was going, where his mind was leading him.
“In a way I think I'm the most creative when I'm single, using the relationship as a metaphor for being too comfortable. I need to not be too content. I need to keep pushing myself.” Andy Warhol is of course one artist that Hultman finds fascinating. Even though Andy Warhol had an asexual persona he played with gay erotica in his work. “Andy Warhol just kept on working, he didn't stop or limit himself, he did what he had to do—he went all the way", Hultman explains.
In everything that Nicklas Hultman creates, he identifies sex as intricately and as intriguingly as it can be. Explicitly or implicitly, in the shape of his heart or his penis.
