Everything you know about sex is true.

The Porn Identity

Pornography has infiltrated the mainstream and is booming in the niches. It pervades everyday life, pop, and the arts. “Pornetration” is flooding the media, which themselves, in their voyeuristic character and greed for signs of excitement, operate in a latently pornographic manner – always on the search for taboos that may be exhausted, broken, and nevertheless maintained at the same time.

Eon McKai: "Eastside Story", 2007, Regie: Vena Virago – Videostill (Courtesy Vivid Alt)

With artists investigating the relationship between power, gaze, and body in regard to pornographic scenarios, “post-pornographic” counter-images to sexism and hetero-normative screw reviews have recently mobilized in the slipstream of the porn Oscars’ stale glamour. The Porn Identity, an exhibition running through June 1st at Kunsthalle in Vienna, confronts the proliferation of pornography with motion pictures, sculptures, and installation works reflecting sexual desire. The transfer of indecent pictures into the art institutional space not only transcends the porn-typical context of market-oriented publication and reprivatized consumption, but also explores the similarities and differences between art and the visual culture of stimulation.

More images in art-magazin.