Daniel RolnikA new gallery named Lux/Eros opened with an erotic exhibit devoted to the vagina. The Map Of Tasmania show was designed to be an allusion to how the shape of the Australian state resembles that of a pussy — you just have to use your crude childlike imagination and suspension of disbelief to see it.
“It's easy to make an exhibit about breasts,” said the owner of Lux/Eros. “It's much more of a challenge to make the work focused around vaginas.”
Ellen Stagg, Ingrid Allen, Adrien Patout, Madeleine Von Froomer, Rick Rodney and Jane Helpern all worked within the confines of their mediums to deliver some great works of art. Especially those by Ingrid Allen, which were really more romantic examples of classical portraiture than the in-your-face drawings by Adrien Patout, who shipped his work all the way from Paris, France to be in the gallery.
But Madeleine Von Froomer really took the cake as far as letting it all out, since her soft sculptures were really the most glaring of the whole show. I mean, they were red, big and right there, almost like they were about to swallow you up.
Stagg, however, is probably the most well known of all the artists in the show. She's shot everyone from Moby to Scarlett Johansson as a commercial photographer, but is definitely more recognized as the creator of the blog Stagg Street — a pay site dedicated to her forays into erotic imagery. Her shoots featuring pornstars and regular girls who just wanted to pose nude were documented for a short while via webisodes that aired on IFC's website. Stagg had two of her Melting Flesh pictures on display, which feature layers of naked girls due to repeated exposure of the film.
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