Jessica Lichtenstein plays with the idea of sexuality and female empowerment in exhibition at gallery nine5
gallery nine5
24 Spring St. between Mott & Elizabeth Sts.
Extended through January 13, free
212-965-9995
www.gallerynine5.com
www.jessicalichtenstein.com
Taking on fetishism, commercialization, sexuality, infantilization, and reappropriation, New York City artist Jessica Lichtenstein celebrates female empowerment in her tantalizing exhibition “Play,” on view at gallery nine5 through January 13. Referencing such successful mass-produced artists as Takashi Murakami and Damien Hirst as well as Playboy’s Vargas girls, Lichtenstein repurposes Japanese anime figurines and pages from erotic comic books, filling display cases with vignettes of highly sexualized dolls performing household duties like cleaning and cooking, exercising, and getting dressed. But what at first appears to be things that can be found in many toy shops turns out, upon closer inspection, to be collections of highly sexualized, scantily clad and/or topless women acting out common male fantasies, with such titles as “Ooh La La,” “Innocent Vixen,” “Lady Leisure,” “Naughty by Nature,” and “T.R.O.U.B.L.E.” The exhibition also features oversized text sculptures and lightboxes that depict the words “Play,” “Lust,” “Yum,” and “Bloom,” composed with colorful images from erotic cartoons, including a wild scene at a water park and on a fantastical planet and a different kind of cherry blossom tree on which one character invitingly declares, “Have a lot of fun with us.” There are also several chairs covered with Victorian-esque decoration that is also not what it first appears. Lichtenstein has compared the show to a Rorschach test, and that is an apt description, as visitors might find the objects on view titillating, silly, humorous, disgusting, insulting, enlightening, embarrassing, delightful — or any combination of those valid reactions.