Chung, Sewon Christina, “Reviving ‘The Golden Age of Porn,’” Artparasites, March 23, 2013

23.03.2013

[CHELSEA] ART REVIEW: AURA ROSENBERG’S "I KNOW IT WHEN I SEE IT" AT MARTOS GALLERY

Reviving "The Golden Age of Porn"

Performers Ryan and Kiara get their white paint on to create the Taurus painting. Photo: Steph Ziemann

For the first time in 25 years, Aura Rosenberg revisits pornographic imagery from a bygone era for her solo exhibit “I Know It When I See It.”

Artist Aura Rosenberg began making paintings based on images from pornographic magazines in the late 1980s. Frequenting clandestine shops on

42nd Street, she was drawn to the glossy depiction of fantasy narratives and used them in her work until the birth of her daughter. Now, after two decades of raising her daughter and working on childhood projects, Rosenberg returned to her dusty magazine collection. The explicit imagery, once considered obscene, felt picturesque. “The Golden Age of Porn” had become fossilized within the pages of faded magazine spreads. These works now hang in Martos Gallery, where they explore themes of transgression and nostalgia in an age where porn is no longer underground, but a constant, background murmur.

Celestial bodies

“I Know It When I See It” chronicles Rosenberg’s major bodies of work, covering subjects including color palettes, astrology, Freud’s giraffe and porn. Beyond the airy main gallery space and hidden in the smaller backroom of the Martos Gallery awaits the most visceral of Rosenberg’s works, “The Astrological Ways.” Life-size bodies imprinted on large black velvet panels overtakes the white walls—starry skies of celestial bodies.

Rosenberg began making body imprint paintings in late 80s, inspired by a 70s day-glo poster “The Afronomical Ways.” The latter featured fluorescent silhouettes of couples posed in sex positions corresponding with 12 astrological signs. In Rosenberg’s body print series, couples would cover their bodies with white paint, take on a pose and imprint them into large sheets of thick black velvet. Upon seeing these works exhibited in a gallery setting, many visitors responded to the corporality of the intimate gestures. Some brought themselves close to each painting, reaching up and hovering their fingertips just inches from the thick velvet cloth matted with traces of white.

The opening night of “I Know It When I See It” at Martos Gallery showcased a performance of Rosenberg’s body imprint paintings. After stripping off their clothing in the main gallery space, a nude man and woman moved into the smaller viewing room to make an imprint painting. Instantaneously, the narrow hall connecting the main gallery to the “The Astrological Ways” viewing room became more packed than a rush hour subway train.

Closely surrounding the two performers was a fence of press and visitors gripping their cameras, digitally documenting every brush stroke. The rest of the viewers stood on tiptoes, peeking behind heads and torsos. Some people held up their cell phones, using the screen to see beyond the thick crowd. Some simply left while others lost interest, standing stoically by the white walls with their eyes fixed on their cell phones and the limitless world inside the device.

What happens when the intimate becomes performative? What happens when the explicit no longer elicits shock? What, then, is truly obscene?

“I Know It When I See It”

The main gallery space at Martos showcases Rosenberg’s recent porn paintings, which she created years after the “Golden Age” came to an end. Her paintings are created directly on the photographic images, with just enough tactile textures added on to transform them. Left intact is the cast of porn stars surrounded by ornate sets and props of the bygone era—once geared towards masculine consumption, but now, forever changed.

Amidst a gallery of these small paintings are two striking large-scale paintings that further transform “Golden Age” porn publication into something new: the giraffe line-drawing from Freud’s Sexual Enlightenment of Children hanging next to a painting of an older woman posing in a maid costume. The giraffe is a reference from the 1909 Freudian case study of childhood, in which a follower of Freud describes the psychoanalysis and “treatment” of his son who developed a phobia of horses at age 5:

"I draw a giraffe for Hans… He says to me, 'You must draw his widdler.' (Hans’s name for penis.) I reply, 'Draw it yourself.' At this Hans adds a new line to the picture of the giraffe, which at first he leaves short but then adds another line to it, remarking, 'His widdler is longer than that.' "

The analysis concludes that the phobia stems from castration anxiety and Oedipus complex: sexual desires for his mother along with feelings of jealousy and aggression towards his father. The cure, according to Freud and little Hans’ father, is for the child to recognize these feelings. In place of the mother’s absent voice in the “treatment” and the dialogue, the artist inserts herself as a presence—through subtle layers and textures.

The exhibit title “I Know It When I See It,” referring to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's famous opinion on the nature of hard-core pornography, grapples with more than porn and porn art. It is about the change in time, shift in perspective and the evolution of the artist as a historical agent. Rosenberg’s work reflects her deep understanding of these nuanced changes. Acknowledging the shift in both the medium and cultural perception of the subject, her paintings reflect both a sense of lost time and lived experiences. Most of all, she offers a way of seeing the changes through a new feminine gaze.

Martos Gallery– Aura Rosenberg “I Know It When I See It” – February 22, 2013 – March 20, 2013: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-6pm [Estimated price range of works: $2000+]

Article by Sewon Christina Chung