What’s that old real estate mantra - location, location, location? Seems it also applies to smutty art exhibits, as demonstrated by the LA installation of Detroit’s The Dirty Show, which had the good sense to abandon the usual galleries in favor of half a seedy downtown motel.
Entering via back alley (naturally), we moved from room to room. Spaces that would have been utterly depressing under normal circumstances somehow became simulacra of themselves (more real than real?) and thus the perfect backdrop for sex-inspired art, dressed with old porn mags and sad sex dolls (Still, I wouldn’t dare go anywhere near the bathrooms…)
The art was a mix of the beautiful, the arousing, the puzzling and the gross. Some of it was clearly artistic erotica - destined for “adult” magazines but created with enough artistry to hang on a gallery wall. Others had far more interesting agendas than mere arousal.
Maybe the oddest offering of the night was the gentleman selling three dimensional carved wood portraits of ladies’ genitalia. And, he was quick to point out, the clitoral section was removable and usable as a pipe. Ceci n’est pas une pipe, indeed.
A few of the works gave one the sense of stepping into a room you’re not supposed to enter. Kinks and fetishes make the world go ‘round, sure. But it’s one thing to know the definition of “bestiality” and quite another to see a realistically painted image of a naked man being mounted by an Irish setter. I’m still not quite sure what to think about the one with the lactating duckies swimming in a sea of their own milk.
A few that have stuck with me: a very ’80s photo of a top-down view of a woman in a bathtub full of milk and froot loops. An oddly beautiful photo of a masturbating man mid release, cropped like Grecian statuary as just torso and cock. A small curio of a nonchalant satyr getting blown by a pixie. And quite a few others including the images you see here, borrowed from Daily Du Jour’s coverage of the event.
It was all good, not necessarily clean fun, and well worth heading downtown for on a Friday night. That, plus a killer lemon, honey & rye cocktail at The Varnish made for a memorably decadent evening.
