an artist’s statement by Joseph Nechvatal for his May exhibit at Universal
Concepts Unlimited
The work of "vOluptuary" (1) unflappably stands up against all forms of
sexual hierarchicalism. In its place it proposes (depicts) what I am calling
an "algorithmic hermaphornology": which is my attempt at pointing us again
(this time through the use of digitalia) towards a visual poetics of
becoming androgynously circular (both solar and telluric). This, of course,
necessitates a re-commitment to our transfigurating imaginations.
To accomplish this circuit, "vOluptuary: an algorithic hermaphornology"
makes use of what Gilles Deleuze has called ‘pornology’ (2) for here
representations of the intimate body associated with sexuality (of both
sexes) undergo an intricate re-combination and subsequent intermixture with
flowers. Of crucial interest to "vOluptuary: an algorithic hermaphornology"
is the origin of the hermaphroditic androgyny image. This hybrid image first
appears in Ovid’s classic text ‘Metamorphoses’ - and perhaps this emergence
is well worth recounting here. The hermaphrodite initially occurs in Western
culture as a son of Hermes and Aphrodite named Hermaphroditus.
Hermaphroditus was a typical, if exceptionally handsome, young male with
whom the water nympth Salmacis fell madly in love. When Hermaphroditus
rejected her sexual advances, Salmacis voyeuristicly observed him from afar
while desiring him fiercely. Finally, one spring day Hermaphroditus stripped
nude and dove into the pool of water which was Salmacis’s habitat. Salmacis
immediately dove in after him - embracing him and wrapping her body around
his, just as, Ovid says, ivy does around a tree. She then prayed to the gods
that she would never be separated from him – a prayer that they answered
favorably. Consequently, Hermaphroditus emerged from the pool both man and
woman.
As the tale of Hermaphroditus suggests, "vOluptuary: an algorithic
hermaphornology" is a show of androgyny eroticism married to flowery
virtuality (3), incomprehensible transformation, and, of course, immersive
excess. It aims to depict an imagined realm of political-spiritual chaosmos
where new forms of sexual order arise such that any form of order is only
temporary and provisional. Obviously this sphere is attained through an
emergent operation, and, indeed, I take abundant pleasure in the forms of
pan-order that arise within its swelling processes. The point is that within
"vOluptuary: an algorithic hermaphornology" all sexual signs are subject to
boundless semiosis - which is to say that they are translatable into other
signs. Here, of course, it is possible to find resonances and affinities
between sexual opposites. Here we can always articulate new sexes within.
Here a chameleon-like sexual demeanor is being built from the virtual abyss.
This self-pleasure is socially beneficial too in that the patriarchal
construction of woman as other and the female body as object is deeply
rooted in the supposed duality (opposites) of the two sexes. Most feminist
theory questions this patriarchal construction of sex and gender, suggesting
that sex is expressed through a continuum, rather than as an opposing
couplet based on heterosexist male/female polarities. Accordingly, within my
vOluptuary multiverse, containments designed for womanhood/manhood are
subverted by the presentation of ambiguous genitalia - the mutable image and
performance of pan-sexuality. Gender here is viewed as an act of becoming.
Here gender performance fails to sustain sex oppression by ceasing to draw
the boundaries of the Other. As such it is a provocation not only to
male/female constructions of heterosexuality, but also to homosexual
constructions of identity. This critique of representation in the aesthetic
sense is part of a critique of representation in the political sense (and
vice versa). Art here is seen as political in the sense that it is a site of
pretty power struggles which are destined to fail to win. So, within
"vOluptuary: an algorithic hermaphornology" no one fathoms whether they are
female or male. All rest between male and female, between straight and gay,
between dominant and submissive - nothing but curves and clefts. All is in a
matrix of possibilities, self-assembled out of a flowery excess of erogenous
organs.
notes:
(1) The word ‘voluptuary’ generally means ‘devoted to pleasure’. It comes
from a Late-Latin variant of the Latin voluptarius / voluptas.
(2) Pornology is aimed at confronting an idea with its own limits. The idea
is rendered precise in Deleuze’s essay ‘Klossowski or Bodies-Language’ which
is found in his book ‘The Logic of Sense’. Here Deleuze develops the term
"pornology" so as to describe the dynamic of a transcendental empiricism in
the circuit Klossowski establishes between theology, as a divine belief
structure, and pornography, as a perverse expression of the body.
(3) One here thinks of Alan Turing (the grandfather of computing) and his
horrid endurance of a quack treatment for his homosexuality where he was
overdosed with female hormones to the point where he developed breasts.
ick cOde (n) everdrOid: the sacre andrOgyne
computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
70 x 100 inches (diptych)
by Joseph Nechvatal
© 2001 Joseph Nechvatal
vOluptuary drOid décOlletage
computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
66 x 120 inches
by Joseph Nechvatal
© 2001 Joseph Nechvatal
us enhanced feerique OrnO
computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
66 x 56 inches
by Joseph Nechvatal
© 2001 Joseph Nechvatal
interlacement immersiOnO
computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
86 x 76 inches
by Joseph Nechvatal
© 2001 Joseph Nechvatal
the birth Of the viractual
computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
70 x 70 inches
by Joseph Nechvatal
© 2001 Joseph Nechvatal
pansexual feeriquer (delicate)
computer-robotic assisted acrylic on canvas
51 x 96 inches
by Joseph Nechvatal
© 2001 Joseph Nechvatal