Art Review: Let's Talk About Sex

Gallery Lombardi's Erotica 2008 is more than a meditation on sexuality. It’s a multidimensional sensory explosion that challenges our relationship to sex, the body, and creativity with fearless exploration of these themes in nearly every conceivable form. The exhibit, curated by Rachel Koper and Ron Prince, showcases over 50 adventurous works including painting, sculpture, video, installation, and mixed media.

How’s this for original: in Barbara Irwin’s object art piece, “Ecstasy,” a tiny golden woman arches her back over a bed in front of a round mirror, from the confines of a golden cage. Tim Alan Wilson presents gleaming dominatrixes and their eager servants, cut from bronze. Reverent fertility offerings, like Oscar Silva’s “Goddess,” and April Garcia’s “In Full Bloom,” use soft textures and inviting shapes to pay homage to the creative possibility inherent in the vulva. Silva uses seed pods to show the universality of this theme, and Garcia’s towering 38” x 50” sculpture make its metaphorical importance delightfully tangible.

From humor to morbidity, Gallery Lombardi’s artists leave no aspect of erotica untouched. Jennifer Cole’s ferocious oil painting, “You Want a Piece of Me?”, shows what happens when the blond who’s been hired to jump out of a cake (frosted “Mr. President”) turns fierce. Even as she stands with cherries for nipples and breasts slathered in whipped cream, she licks the knife-point with an expression that says she’s anything but sweet. Sarah Sudhoff’s unbarred defiance of sex and sterility manifests in photography and video of her own ventures in the gynecologist’s office, and bathing in a medical basin. Cy Smathers lightens things up, offering imagined insight into the specific endowments—or lack thereof—of various political figures (Hint: Keith Obermann rides high and mighty ... Karl Rove, not so much), culminating in a mixed media on canvas piece that’s playful with a satirical bite.