New York-based artist Emma Stern unveiled her newest solo exhibition, Hell is Sizzling, at Almine Rech’s Paris outpost. Increasing her solid of latex-slick avatars, this new physique of labor supply a brand new lens for embodiment, need and perversion, with an off-kilter model of feminism, one of many Crash (1996) selection. Between all its lovely “bunny-eared” and “mermaid-tailed” monsters, Stern captures the collision of fantasy and flesh in all its dreamy, disarming depth.
The artist’s course of begins in 3D software program, digitally sculpting our bodies which are later translated into lush gradients and vaporous washes of paint. Her figures — half doll, half cyborg — stand as monuments to the hyper-sexualized imagery of the web, whereas additionally reimagining it with a meticulous, nearly devotional hand. Each shimmer, each curve, displays a profound consideration to the fantasy of type.
As Alex Quicho observes, “Stern’s idols give us the post-human we deserve” — creatures caught between battle and seduction, spectacle and self-awareness. Within the modern theater of need, identification fractures and reforms via an ecstatic melting between our bodies, rather than bruising. “Pores and skin-to-skin like cream on pavement. Like a snowball in hell. The enemies-to-lovers pipeline has by no means been so scorching.”
The exhibition is now on view via June 7 in Paris.
Almine Rech Turrenne
64 Rue de Turenne,
75003 Paris, France
