ART OF ATTRACTION
F.L.O.A.T. Gallery 300 West 22nd street NY, NY 10011
Opening Reception 4 March, 2011 6-9pm
Art of Attraction is curated by Caroll Tavares and Meagan Ziegler-Haynes.
F.L.O.A.T. Gallery is pleased to announce Art of Attraction, on view 4 March through Spring 2011, the exhibition explores sexual attraction and physical beauty as it relates to modern everyday existence across the globe through the work of twelve acclaimed photographers, collectives and duos, including Cass Bird, Brian Finke, Stephen Irwin, Ellen Jong, Sandy Kim, Zed Nelson, Løber Nøgen, Yisook Sohn, Joseph Szabo, Caroll Tavares, Therese+Joel, Camille Vivier and Christian Weber.
Art of Attraction delves into the global obsession with an increasingly narrow Western ideal of physical beauty and sexual attraction, uncovering the extreme lengths taken in the pursuit of appearing physically “attractive” to the opposite sex and to others while presenting revealing images capturing sexual desire and attraction.
Highlights of the exhibition include Zed Nelson’s images, taken from his recent ‘Love Me’ series photographed in 17 countries across five continents. Reflecting on the cultural and commercial forces that continue to drive a globalized preoccupation with youth and beauty, Nelson’s photographs bring into question notions of beauty as perceived in the West and exported abroad. The work of Yisook Sohn similarly refers back to a contemplation of Western ideas of aesthetics versus traditional beauty in Korea. Works from Ellen Jong’s ‘Getting to Know My Husband’s Cock’ push boundaries of self-discovery and of the physical in love. Seeking understanding of her most fundamental metaphysical questions through the documentation of her own life, Ellen injects a sense of the body into everyday life and her personal account of romance. Stephen Irwin’s delicate images remake the naïve pornography of his adolescence into a shifting representation of sexuality, reducing pornographic pages to their most essential forms. Joseph Szabo’s photographs reveal both quiet introspection and evoke unashamed teenage desire. Together, these works examine beauty ideals and question accepted notions of physical and sexual attraction and appreciation.
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