Betty Tompkins. Just a Pretty Face

About

P·P·O·W is pleased to present Just a Pretty Face, Betty Tompkins’ third solo exhibition with the gallery. Known for her unabashed portrayals of the female body and sexual desire, Tompkins has been shunned, censored, and celebrated in the five decades since she first began her iconic Fuck Paintings series. Beginning her career during a period in which pornographic imagery was contested by both ends of the American political spectrum, Tompkins found the ‘charge’ she was looking for in the radically explicit source imagery she continues to mine. Just a Pretty Face brings together new and rarely before seen works from 1990 to 2024 to highlight Tompkins’ decades-long practice of appropriating imagery created for male self-pleasure to reframe societal taboos.