From Nov 12 through Dec 6, 2011.
Apart from the literal implications of the show’s title, ‘Sex, Drugs & Profanity’ explores the varying modalities of social norms and, simultaneously, taboos with which contemporary artists consistently wrestle with.
Cultural references to drug use are rife with contradictions; whether a single pill, injection or drop can hurt or heal is a source of consistent, passionate debate amongst artists, politicians and scientists, alike. Artists such as Nan Goldin, Tina La Porta, Scott Snyder and Oleg Dou do display active and inactive references to drugs and medications, but there is a deeper concern for gauging the interactive; to trigger the limitations of the viewer’s imagination beyond their immediate associations with the image, itself. More than what a mass-manufactured drug can or can’t do, the artists grapple with the after-effects, the body remaining and the mind permanently altered.
Sex and profanity are, often erroneously, inextricably linked as and in a single condition. Stereotyping sexual behaviors and underlying fetishisms within urban culture has produced a widely-regarded notion of the activity within the ‘underground’, a vampire-like complex which effectively masks any sense of normalcy of sex as a natural act. Thus, drawing on ancient oral and written traditions, particularly within Western cultures, the profane is equated to dark, the sacred with light. Artists such as Nick Gentry, Troy Abbott, Simon Thompson and Stella Mouzi visually rebel against these common distinctions, instead offering the possibility of the sacred pushed deep underground and the profane distributed in broad daylight, achieving the spiritual and sensory blasphemies it seeks to suppress.
‘Sex, Drugs & Profanity’ opens on the evening of November 12th from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. and will run until December 6th. Artists featured in the exhibition include Troy Abbott, Beejoir, Oleg Dou, Damien Hirst, C. Finley, Nan Goldin, Nick Gentry, Tina La Porta, Penny, Oliver Malin, Mantis, Stella Mouzi, Philip Ross Munro, Jefro, Scott Snyder and Simon Thompson.
Robert Fontaine Gallery
175 NW 23rd Street
Miami, FL 33127
305.397.8530
www.robertfontainegallery.com
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