Erotic art heats up summer at SoFA Gallery

Surreal. Funny. Abstract. Ironic. Embarrassing.

At the Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show, sex is everything but taboo.  

The show, which had its opening reception Friday evening and will remain in the School of Fine Arts Gallery until July 31, contains about 120 pieces of sexuality-related contemporary art in media that range from acrylic paint to video to a graphic novel.

Some of the artwork came from as far away as the Netherlands, while several artists are from Bloomington.

“Because it’s such a wide range of work, I don’t expect everybody to like everything,” said Catherine Johnson-Roehr, Kinsey Institute Curator, one of the show’s organizers. “But I think because there is such a variety, everyone will find things they like in the show.”

This year – the fourth for the show and its first in the SoFA Gallery – the artwork was selected by juror Jennifer Cahn, curator of the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art in Brownsville, Texas.

Cahn chose the pieces for the exhibit from 758 submissions by 343 artists.

Although the umbrella subject of the show is sexuality, the art deals with topics as diverse as sensuality, gender identity, pregnancy and the human body. And no artist in the show portrays sexual issues in the same way.

Unionville, Ind., resident Jack Doskow’s artwork in the show was a photograph of a banana bunch with a penis peeling out of the banana in front. He said his intent was for the photo to be humorous when people saw he was literally turning a metaphor inside out.  

“It was a joke – the whole bananas-as-penises thing,” Doskow said.

Doskow said after he found out his photo had been chosen to be on exhibit for the show, he felt a bit embarrassed.

“‘Oh great, do I really want this in public?’” he said of his reaction. “But in the context of everything here, it’s not that big of a deal. It’s a level playing field.”

Photographer David Moyle from Placentia, Calif., took a more serious approach to sexuality with “Alone Time 2,” his black-and-white photo of a woman’s lower torso and loosened white thong underwear while she masturbates. He too said although his artwork would seem explicit in other places, here it seems right at home.

“In the context of this show, it’s pretty mild,” he said.

Another reason he said it seemed right at home was because it was at the same school Alfred Kinsey himself studied female masturbation a few decades ago. But Moyle said he still knows women who are embarrassed about it.

“I think it’s actually very beautiful,” Moyle said. “But a lot of people are afraid of it.”

Even though the Kinsey Institute’s art shows are designed to have an accepting attitude toward art that is explicit, Johnson-Roehr said some people still ask if it is art or pornography.

Artists with work in the exhibit were eager to denounce the latter.

Doskow said of his photograph that he hoped his audience would, first of all, be amused.  

“And then,” he said, “they may wonder, ‘How was this picture taken?’”

He said he hopes they will see the aesthetics of the picture – the woody framing, the colors, the way the bananas lead to both the main subject in the front and toward the back of the photo.

Moyle said the style of his photo was based on the style of photography used in ads by companies like Guess, which he started noticing when he worked in advertising. He said his style was a combination of appreciation of the female form and of the natural light used in such ads.  

“We don’t call our shows pornography,” Johnson-Roehr said.  

But, she said, the topic always seems to come up, and the best way to decide whether you agree is to see the work for yourself and discuss it.

“I think if people come with other people, it can lead to some interesting discussions about how people depict sexuality,” she said.  

Still, other artists were less concerned about making a statement than they were opening a discussion.

Newburgh, Ind., artist Ralph Larmann’s piece in the show is an acrylic painting titled “Fall from Grace,” which involves a nude woman hanging down from a stone flying-pig statue above the gate of a mansion, with a hot dog vendor below raising a hot dog toward her.

The food, Larmann said, is a temptation for the woman, but sexual temptation between the man and woman is also involved. But he said he would rather leave interpretation open to the piece’s audience.

“I don’t really like things that tell you what you should think,” Larmann said.