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“ON
ART” … from the Victoria Times Colonist, August 11,
2004
It’s
art, but is it really erotic?
ROBERT
AMOS
Freedom Erotica Art Gallery, 416
Craigflower Road, 920-7399
Petals is the third show I’ve attended at Freedom Erotica
Art Gallery (416 Craigflower Rd., 920-7399, www.freedomerotica.ca).
It’s a shoestring storefront gallery, but it has been holding
its own for a while now and it’s still there. The new exhibition,
titled Petals, by San Diego artist Nick Karras, has put things on
a different level entirely.
Nick Karras brought fifty sepia-tinted photographs of Petals to
hang. They are accompanied by his hard-cover book ($50) and a half-hour
documentary about how the Petals project came about. Pretty classy.
Petals? Each photo presents, in a tender and straightforward way,
the external genitalia of a woman. Labia, vulva — you know
what I mean. No tricky lighting, no distracting props or sets —
just the mouth of the sacred cave, the Origin of us all.
The photographs are all reproduced in a hardcover slipcased book.
The video documentary on the project (by Beck Peacock) introduces
you to many of the women whose lips are presented in the book. These
women’s empowered and positive response to Karras’s
work isn’t faked. In fact, one of the photo-shoots is filmed
so you can judge for yourself the prevailing atmosphere, which I
would call respectful, even worshipful.
Throughout the video, Karras appears anxious, uncertain about the
response that his photographs will generate. He might well be. When
Hustler magazine offered to publish some of the pictures in a review
of the book, Karras was deeply conflicted — it would increase
sales, but at the same time confuse or demean his intentions with
Petals as a project.
How would you feel about going into Erotica art gallery? Each of
us must wonder, will Petals strike me as erotic, pornographic or
artistic? Is there a difference?
Gallery owner Brent Ullerick has to deal with these distinctions
and misperceptions all the time. He seems like a reasonable sort
of person — neither perverted nor brazenly capitalistic. He’s
running a little start-up gallery, the sort which focuses on local
painting and sculpture. The gallery is themed — not wildlife
art, nor aboriginal art. It’s about erotica.
Freedom Gallery shows at least as many female artists as male.
Erotica addresses the wide range of expressive responses to the
sex urge.
There’s plenty of room before this creativity turns pornographic.
Where would western art history be without the erotic drive of Rembrandt,
Gauguin and Picasso? (By the way, I have never seen anything which
struck me as pornographic in his gallery — not that pornography
isn’t elsewhere available 24 hours a day in Victoria.)
Recently the gallery was inhabited only by Karras’s photos
of Petals. Mauve floor, pink baseboards and white walls complemented
these buff- and bronzecoloured photo prints. Petals is more specific
and detailed and focussed on women’s sex organs than any “erotic
art show” I’ve ever seen … and yet it is curiously
not erotic.
Eros depends on the possibility that the hidden will be revealed.
It is the markers on that trail of approach — frilly underwear,
high-heeled shoes, hair and lipstick — which are seized upon
and fetishized as erotic. By revealing the inner doors of the mystery,
Karras has brought us very near to The Actual Orifice Herself. We
find, of course, She is an absence, a void, a mysterious empty space.
Karras makes considerable effort to show that women are at least
half of his target audience. The revelation of the beauty of their
private parts is his goal. He wants to liberate women. Karras quotes
Robert Hahn, M. D.:
“It never ceases to amaze me how often women perceive their
external genitalia as unattractive, even abnormal. Just as there
is loveliness in the faces of all women, however, each woman’s
vagina is uniquely beautiful.”
Karras seems to present Petals as a noble cause: he wants us to
understand that the vagina is not something to use — it is
something to worship and celebrate. Nice to do it for women. Nevertheless,
considering how men love to look at women’s private parts,
I wouldn’t rule out the photographer’s own selfinterest
in the project.
Is it art? Of course it is. The man had an idea, he has produced
well-made objects and is eliciting a reponse — even from people
who haven’t been to the show.
Is it erotic? Almost the reverse. As Georgia O’Keeffe made
flowers look like vulvas, so Karras makes vulvas look like flowers.
Is it pornographic? No. These photographs will in no way outrage
any societal norms. In fact, this seems like an educational endeavour.
You can’t mistake the loving attention that went into the
making of Petals, a form of goddess worship. It’s a sign of
the times.
(This show, Petals, was booked into Victoria for a short term originally,
and has gone elsewhere to fulfill commitments. Due to the strong
local interest Petals is scheduled to return to Victoria in mid-September.
The book and the DVD are currently available at Freedom Erotica
gallery.)
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