TEMPTATION /// Vernissage

About

Temptation: a desire to engage in short-term urges for enjoyment that threatens long-term goals. The notion of 'temptation' goes back to the biblical era, where the topic itself was mostly associated with sin and carried heavy consequences....cue Adam, Eve, and the Apple - and the infamous expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

Temptation has also been a topic of reference and inspiration throughout art history, from the Renaissance era in Botticelli's Temptation of Christ to early Netherlandish painter Hieronymus Bosch's Temptation of St. Anthony - where the imagery associated with temptation was often wildly crass, vulgar, and sexually explicit in nature - laced with demons and witches - and beyond.

Fortunately today, the concept of temptation has evolved into a more ecstatic nature, namely in the realm of a progressive queer society. For many, temptation now is a wondrous position, the urge nothing short of being a virtue, an aspiration even.

To be 'tempted' is to enjoy the wonders of seduction, allurement, enticement, glamour, attractiveness, charm. Now - more closely related to Bosch's famous work The Garden of Earthly Delights. A sheer pleasure. Fetishized. A marvelous decoy.

With this more radical sentiment, the artists in the exhibition TEMPTATION agree.

The artist Moena Joy-Dada Weiss is a Berlin-based photographer. She finds fascination in documenting the human environment and exploring the encounter between the camera and the subject. For her, a portrait of a person holds tremendous vulnerability; the intimacy between the photographer and her subject thus establishes a unique bond. These are special individuals - ones with a certain spark: an outsider, a drag queen, a performer....a marginalized magical individual, but also often the subjects of temptation for those who wish to see a window into their worlds.

Philip Pedersen spent a formative era of his life documenting London's alternative queer culture /club scene in the 90s. - an infamous playground for over-the-top excess and self-expression in club life- with a riotous explosion of colour, naked flesh and pop-art visuals, hedonism, and plenty of temptation.

The vivid cast of characters - club freaks, celebrities, rent boys, prostitutes, S&M swingers, gangsters, and transvestites would unite and release their joy onto the dance floor in a debaucherous mayhem- and Pedersen was there to capture it all. His psychedelic imagery and portraits convey his impressions from a moment in this wildly magical time. As these experiences have resonated later in his life, Pedersen continues to use queers as his subjects but has shifted his focus to creating luscious hyper-realistic oil paintings of guys in his studio.

We can´t keep on living like this! is the title of the series created by Benjamin Reding for the exhibition, taken from lyrics in the song ‚Temptation” by “Heaven 17”, a big hit in the mid-1980s. In tune with the message of this song and the times, Reding‘s triptych photos capture the youth angst of the period in which they were taken.

The messages in Reding‘s work resonate now in today‘s society just as loudly as they did in the era when the photos were taken: an artist and unique human yearning to find a way OUT of the average life (school, family, middle-class normality‚ concrete paradise communities/council estate flats ... and stigmatized destinies). His photographs were meant (in 1987/88 and today) as a statement against the common rules of society which dictate how we should live, love, act, and behave.

Erling Viktor‘s work covers unrest, movement and change. In his practice, the artist reflects on life‘s experiences, albeit through pleasure or pain, memory, and then seizes impulses from a general perspective. which can be drawn from long-term, personal experiences. He searches endlessly for truth - whether in himself or the people around him. Naked and on this search, he uses art to dive into what is behind the clichés and the charming facades to reveal true colours. The artist's goal is to demonstrate deep and complicated feelings with authenticity and candour - posing obsolete and playful questions about human exchanges and sexual encounters through paintings, drawings and collages. His collage work for the exhibition abstractly touches on various perfect erotic fantasies in the midst of life‘s chaos.

The self-taught artist Paul of Scotland, also known as Paul Fraser, documents his evolution as a gay Leather-man by creating representations in drawings of what he deems to be the ultimate vision of what makes a man more masculine - in uniforms and leather. He tempts himself through his own idolized creations.

As a teenager, Paul started to copy and recreate Ancient Egyptian frescos. While entering into adulthood, his libido was actually more interested in leather-men, and through self-training, he took inspiration from his all-time idol Tom of Finland’s style. The artist works from photographs to maximize the likeness in his images and he loves to pay tribute to the pillars of the fetish community as of lately, developing drawings on black paper and giving a focus on the light

Through their various perspectives, via the mediums of drawing, painting, collage and photo, a dialogue about temptation is established through queer existence from a romantic point of view- albeit through gay-cliches and transgenders - to a rather raw style of expression which explores the multi-faceted depths of desire and the soul.

Coinciding with the opening of the exhibition, the duo 'Zona Interdunar' will perform live at Galerie-P6 on SATURDAY, April 8, from 17-19:00.

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