Whether or not the types suggest straightforwardly constrained sex that is single or androgynous, blended areas of the body, every thing in Paradox of Pleasure talks in my opinion associated with radical human body politics of cyberpunk energy, intercourse, and physical physical violence.

That churning anima of desire places it together with H.R. Giger’s famous 1973 artwork Penis Landscape (aka “Work 219: Landscape XX”). But unlike Giger’s alien visual, Fernandez’s accomplishment is really a reinvention of romanticism, where in actuality the performative as well as the innovative look curiously connected. A lot more to the stage, Fernandez’s foreboding paintings share in the chopped body looks well-liked by Robert Gober and Paul Thek, especially Thek’s Technological Reliquaries series, which include Meat Piece with Warhol Brillo Box” (1965). Such as these performers, Fernandez appears to take comfort in an inventiveness which can be morally negligent, gnarly, brooding, unfortunate, eccentric, and emotionally going in a manner that is maddeningly difficult to explain without mentioning brutality that is cold. It is really not for absolutely nothing that certain of his paintings, “Développement d’un délire” (growth of a delusion,” 1961) that is maybe maybe maybe not in this show ended up being showcased when you look at the 1980 Brian de Palma film Dressed to destroy (a film beloved by particular performers because of its Metropolitan Museum of Art scene, lushly scored by Pino Donaggio).

Agustin Fernandez, “Untitled” (1997), oil on canvas, 103 x 132 cm (courtesy and Agustin Fernandez Foundation; picture by Daniel Pype) Agustin Fernandez, “Le Roi et la Reine” (“The King and also the Queen,” 1960), drawing in some recoverable format, 175 x 122 cm (courtesy and Agustin Fernandez Foundation; picture by Farzad Owrang)

Aesthetically, Fernandez’s paintings of armored, pansexual closeness develop a vivid psycho geography which can be a bit lumbering in very similar method as Wifredo Lam’s, Roberto Matta’s, and André Masson’s mystical paintings. But, this will be a thing that Fernandez’s drawings, like “Le Roi et la Reine” (“The King in addition to Queen,”1960) which calls in your thoughts Marcel Duchamp’s painting that is famous Roi et la Reine entourés de Nus vites” (“The King and Queen enclosed by Swift Nudes,” 1912) find a way to avoid.

However in both mediums, along with their collages (like the“Malcom that is startling X 1982), you will find complicated identifications going on that blur organic with inorganic kinds.

Duchamp first made mention of the equipment célibataire (bachelor machine) apparatus in a 1913 note written in planning for his piece “La mariée mise à nu par ses célibataires, même” (“The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, also,” 1915–23), which accentuates psychological devices that work away in the imaginary, deconstructing the Hegelian tradition of intimate distinction founded being a dialectical and natural opposition of masculine and feminine. Fernandez’s sex that is enigmatic bondage, which probes the shameless vagaries of individual desire with Duchampian panache, is an indirect outgrowth associated with the arrière garde, male dominant French Surrealist preferences demonstrated within the 1959 Eros event arranged by André Breton and Duchamp in Paris. But inaddition it shows a far more modern, tautly eroticized and flesh that is virtualized banking institutions view it now on a hyper sexed, electronic corporeality that is synthetic, bionic, and prosthetic fundamentally an updated expansion regarding the re territorialization of body, identification, and appearance depicted early when you look at the feverish cyborg looks of Oskar Schlemmer and Fernand Léger.

As perversely droll and symptomatic since it is to experience the rhapsody of Fernandez’s loveless and lopsided sadomasochistic cybernetic pleasures playing in the male mystique, i possibly could perhaps not assist but additionally view the nasty permissiveness of Paradox of enjoyment within the bright light of creative misogyny that shines from Kate Millett’s seminal 1970 study intimate Politics right through to today’s #TimesUp motion. Inside the many alluring compositions, Fernandez imagines the effective castration for the privileged male musician in relationship into the manipulated feminine human body. Therein lies the paradox that is pleasurable. Agustin Fernandez, “Untitled” (1976), drawing in writing, 74 x 56 cm (courtesy and Agustin Fernandez Foundation; picture by Farzad Owrang) Agustin Fernandez, “Malcom X” (1982), collage, 91.7 cm x 64.5 cm (courtesy and Agustin Fernandez Foundation; photo by Daniel Pype)