MIROSLAV TICHY /// Known/Unknown on FORBES

MIROSLAV TICHY, untitled, undated, 18 x 12,5cm, Courtesy Delmes & Zander

/// The exhibition "Known/Unknown" recommended on FORBES ///

"The Five Most Anticipated New York Art Museum Exhibits of Winter 2017" by Adam Lehrer 

"When the subject of human sexuality is explored by visual artists, a certain contradiction always lies beneath the surface of the work. Artists generally create work to eventually show an audience. Because of that, a conceptual conceit will always muddle the portrayal of sex in the work. Either the work will be deliberately provocative as in the work of Robert Mapplethorpe, or it will be examining the gaze or media portrayals of sex itself, as in the work of Marilyn Minter. For this upcoming Museum of Sex show, curator Frank Maresca sought to show art that directly reflected the inner sexual worlds of its creators. To avoid the conceptual dilemma, he chose to select work solely by outsider artists. The artwork in the exhibition is all reflective of its respective creators' inner-most sexual desires and fantasies and was made without the hope that it would be shown to a public. By removing the element of exhibitionism, the show offers a deeply private look into artists' sexualities. The work in the show ranges from what society would deem "normal" sexuality such as Eugene Von Bruenchenheim loving nude portraits of his wife, to the voyeuristic and lurid. Numerous photographs by the Czech artist Miroslav Tichý, for example, are grainy and deconstructed images taken of women by the artist with his own homemade cameras. Like great Hitchcock cinema, Tichý's photographs implicate himself and the viewer in the sexual act of watching. And then, there is the illustrations of Henry Darger. Darger was a custodian in a Chicago hospital in the 20th Century, and when he passed coroners found a 15,000 page book entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion along with hundreds of illustrations. Some of those illustrations depict acts of sexual violence and depravity against children, often thought to be influenced by the abuse Darger suffered as a child. All of the sex in the exhibition is depicted without judgment, placing the viewer in the position of intuitively understanding their own feelings towards the different manifestations of sexual desire. (...)"

"Known/Unknown"
at the Museum of Sex, NY
January 19, 2017 – September 16, 2017