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In response to the growing anti-institution sentiment pervasive in our culture, the Museum of Sex has engaged a group of 20 select street artists to occupy the third floor gallery at the Museum of Sex. Showcasing work that pushes the boundaries of our relationship to sexuality in public space, “F*CK ART” invites a dialogue around the power of visual provocation in the urban environment. |
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“This is not an exhibition for the timid”
Museum of Sex Presents: “F*CK ART”
In response to the growing anti-institution sentiment pervasive in our culture, the Museum of Sex has engaged a group of 20 select street artists to occupy the third floor gallery at the Museum of Sex. Showcasing work that pushes the boundaries of our relationship to sexuality in public space, “F*CK ART” invites a dialogue around the power of visual provocation in the urban environment.
This installation is a combination of existing pieces and site-specific works created for the run of the show. Upon entrance into the Fifth Avenue lobby, visitors will encounter the 14-foot FUCK BIKE #001 by Andrew H. Shirley & William Thomas Porter, as well as a display of The Future Tools Collection, a series of resurfaced/re-imagined sex toys by Wonderpuss Octopus. Cassius Fouler’s We’re F*cked wall of playfully explicit food-related iconography will lead visitors down to the Oral Fix Bar on the lower level of the Museum.
Upstairs in the gallery, Miss Van’s ultra-sensual, female figures are represented by a pair of her Twinkles paintings which flank The Magic Box, a hand-crafted illuminated wooden and velvet box complete with an oval painting inside that was created uniquely for the F*CK ART show.
Selections from Berlin-based street artist MODE 2’s one day painting installation on cardboard, Urban Affairs Extended, are on view next to ROSTARR’s Nation of Millions, a 113-inch canvas. Across the gallery, JMR’s abstract and colorful The Adventures of Hand Solo is presented alongside a wall by DROID and GEN 2 of the 907 Crew. Six acrylic-on-plexi pieces by El Celso are mounted next to a fantasy Playboy alien installation by Patch Whisky.
Wolftits, Painted Wolf Rug, 2012. Courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Sex.
Coming out of retirement for the show, the notorious DICKCHICKEN installs Dreams of Childhood, a wheatpaste wallpaper, hung with three acrylic and oil works on panel: ChickenDick, PollaPollo and Tribute to Keith. Mixing contemporary American art movements and traditional Japanese aesthetics, the international street artist AIKO creates a full wall and object installation along the far side of the gallery. Across the room, San Francisco-based artist Jeremy Novy’s unique stencils of gay imagery create a counterpoint to AIKO’s feminine visuals with a series of stencil-on-panel and wheatpasted wallpaper.
Tony Bones’ life-sized wood-panel cutouts, WOLFTITS’ painted wolf-rug and B-rad Izzy’s blown up classified ads will also be on view next to RTTP, a collaboration between artists Nathan Vincent & Bryan Raughton. This duo explores the desires of men-seeking-men on Craigslist with a series of stickers and found panels which showcase their collection of “private desire” drawings pasted in the streets of New York. Rounding out the group, the self-described “world’s premier graffiti asshole,” Australian artist LUSH, paints a site-specific wall complete with an interactive ice cream cart.
Curators Emilie Baltz and Mark Snyder seek to provoke not simply the notions of museum-going experience by presenting provocative work, but also push the boundaries of what artists can create. This is not an exhibition for the timid, and they have engaged artists to use this space as a forum to create and present critical, provocative commentary around sexuality and its relationship to both human and cultural identity.
