Romantic Agony
dal 18/5/2011 al 17/6/2011
Segnalato da
18/5/2011
Romantic Agony
Horton Gallery - Chelsea, New York
Borrowing it's title from the seminal text by Mario Praz, a treatise on the sensual sensibility in romantic literature, the exhibition explores a debauched vision of the erotic in art that does away with any idealized notions of the body or the pleasures it seeks. Collected here are works that explore a darker strain of sexuality.
Horton Gallery, Chelsea is pleased to present Romantic Agony, a group show featuring work by Ion Birch, Doron Langberg, Jacques Louis Vidal and Summer Wheat.
“The stirrings within us have their own fearful excesses.” – Georges Bataille
Borrowing it’s title from the seminal text by Mario Praz, a treatise on the sensual sensibility in romantic literature, the exhibition explores a debauched vision of the erotic in art that does away with any idealized notions of the body or the pleasures it seeks. Collected here are works that explore a darker strain of sexuality. Unapologetically carnal and verging on the grotesque, these artists subvert the overwhelming tendency to tame and aestheticize the sexual act. They capture instead, sexual energy en brute, a state of ecstatic convulsion and chaos.
The work in Romantic Agony is fleshly but never gratuitous. Whereas in the past, tastefulness trumped truth and steered clear of shock value, these artists have discarded societal and moral considerations to depict that which the Romantics, turning to exalted landscapes and natural phenomenon, sought to depict: the sublime. Here it appears on a personal, human scale, to defend that the body too can sense, register, create and convey breathtaking intensity.
Image: Summer Wheat, Scratchpad, 2010, Oil and acrylic on canvas, 72x96" / 182.8x243.8cm, SW001
Opening Reception: Thursday, May 19, 6-8 PM
Horton Gallery, Chelsea
504 West 22nd Street - Parlor Level, New York
Tues-Sat, 11-6 & By Appointment
free entry