The most comprehensive survey of a remarkably dynamic, and growing body of work.

The exhibition was developed outside the national and international stoplights, mainly in Mexico City, Acapulco, Mazatlan and other cities south of the American border. Mexican artists that create erotic art largely worked alone and without encouragement or acknowledgment from the art community. This survey demonstrates that a sense of identity and cohesion as been created by contemporary artist living and working in Mexico. The rich culture and city life has provided the ultimate stimulus and common ground for these artist, who use the sensual and erotic nature of being human as their subject matter. In the past few decades, Mexican artists have emerged as powerful agents of change and a new social drive for freedom of expression.

A Mirror of the times

Erotic artwork is the clearest and most accurate mirror of a given period. No other theme provides us with such reliable information about how people, a generation or an individual sees the world around us. The prominence of erotic elements in Mexican civilization as a whole has assured the salience of such themes in art. The definition or categorization of something as “erotic” or “artistic” relies crucially, and in the end, on the successful association of it with something else already classified as erotic. Critics will of course expend much energy and effort in arguing the erotic or artistic qualities of the work in question. This is nothing new in itself in the domain of art, since the twentieth century has seen an increasing liberalization of respectable art. What they are in fact asking is how we distinguish between pornography and art when there is a match of content: nothing but sex in both. With this new problem, it is no longer the presence of “pornographic material” that is the distinguishing characteristics of pornography, but rather the context within which the work is produced and sold. My argument is that it is due to the conjuncture of the pornographic with the erotic that the artwork enjoys such insistent acclaim, and that the arguments for its aesthetics “in spite” of its pornographic qualities reveal the fundamental investments of art. The erotic provides a frame in which the element may be anchored and provides artistic purpose.

Artists also use erotic imagery as a means of involving the spectator with the work; we now feel that the individual is most easily defined as such through an examination of his erotic fantasies and impulses. Erotic Imagery thus becomes an important weapon in the battle for modernism placing contemporary art on the front-line.

There seems no doubt that contemporary erotic art may be proof that the artist is integrating in society. Actually, such artists look for just one thing - to attract attention - Latin Visions: Mexican Artists Look at Erotica gives us in exchange the most profound ethical message.

Please take the time to digest an abstrat essay on freedom of expression and art. [Click here for ESSAY]

We welcome your comments.

Luis and Theresa De La Cruz, Curators
X-Art@Lifestyles.org
March 2004

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Press release

AN ESSAY