Reviews

By Douglas MacCash, May 12, 2000

The "Sextablos" show at Barristers Gallery is an off-color romp through the sexual fantasies of 80 contemporary artists from Chicago, plus the erotic musings of 15 New Orleanians, all painted on notebook-sized sheets of tin. As you can imagine, there's plenty of coital gymnastics going on in the little pieces. Technically, most of the art is pretty good; some of it's excellent.

Of the Chicagoans, check out Karl Wirstrum's comic book cartooning- boy meets girl, girl bites boy's overly long nose, boy loves it. Also look for weird botanical illustration by Takeshi Yamada- imagine a hybrid of butternut squash and Dolly Parton. And don't miss my favorite: Jim Lutes' "Thank You for All the Good Ones"- a smeary abstract painting of what looks like water balloons wrestling in Wesson oil.

Of the New Orleans artists, Anastasia Pelias' pink grid is the best. Pelias usually creates big, beautifully drippy paintings that are nothing more than overlapping patterns of color. How could she use her style to convey eroticism? Simple: She cut nasty magazines- the kind that show absolutely everything- into strips and wove the strips together into a fleshen plaid, which she glued to a tin sheet painting carnal carnation-pink. Outrageous. Outstanding.

The show is the brain-child of Chicago artist Michael Hernandez de Luna, who envisioned it as a satire of two Mexican folk art traditions. Retablos are traditional Mexican paintings of saints on sheets of tin. People buy a retablo of their patron saint from a local artist and nail it above the door of their bedroom or on the wall, near a family shrine. Ex-votos are also religious paintings on tin, but they're more specific. Let's say you ask Saint Lucy to help you with your failing eyesight and in a few days your vision clears up. Then you ask an artist to paint a depiction of the event, with a small St. Lucy to the side. Ex-votos are symbolic thank yous for answered prayers.

"I went to a show of retablos at The Mexican Fine Arts Museum, back in 1997," de Luna said, "and I was very disappointed. Look, I'm Mexican-Mercian, and I didn't like it at all. It was so stereotypical, you know: little Mexican paintings of saints. So, the whole idea was to do something that ran against that stereotype. Then came the Clinton-Lewinski thing. The media made it so totally explicit. Day after day, you got this salacious soap opera on TV- four stars for pornography. So I said, OK, let's see what would happen with sexual taboos and retablos."

Most of the artists in the show accepted that premise with an air of good-natured naughtiness, painting "sextablos" (the better word might have been "sex-votos") that thanked heaven for sexual favors. Others, of course, took the opportunity to create blasphemous little scenes, principally meant to offend the faithful. So, if you want to be offended, go see the show; if not, don't. If you want the show to be a big success, then cal the police, or pick it or something. Controversial art needs your outrage to survive.

De Luna is no stranger to artistic controversy. His own art is a combination of Conceptualism and counterfeiting. He makes fake postage stamps with politically provocative themes. Three of his own pieces are included in the "Sextablos" exhibit. One set of stamps is dedicated to Melissa Etheridge and her partner July Cypher. Another set depicts horses mating. Another is a portrait of the first woman with whom De Luna had a sexual encounter. The stamps are beautifully made; they would fool anybody. Almost anybody.

De Luna isn't happy just making stamps that look authentic; he has to prove their authenticity by sticking them to self-addressed envelopes (or tin sheets, in the case of the "Sextablos" pieces) and dropping them into mail boxes. Most of the time the letters don't show up, but occasionally they get delivered with the stamps canceled as if they were genuine (the pieces in the show were all delivered). At least one must have fallen into the hands of a postal inspector, though, because De Luna is currently under investigation and there's a "cease and desist" order prohibiting him from continuing his postal art project.

Site design and administration by f i s h e y e w o r l d