Patric Stillman understands and sees the fear, and his response is to confront it. The gallerist of The Studio Door in Hillcrest has noticed a reticence to display erotic art in other spaces, like galleries and museums. People continue to be dually fixated on, and uncomfortable, with expressions of sex and sexuality. In the art world, he knows that means that many artists who create work exploring this topic have a hard time sharing their work in the open. His new exhibition provides a space for those artists and for patrons.
“I really wanted to see art that was a high quality, looking at the diverse human experience, so I reached out to artists, looking for them to showcase what sexuality meant to them and bring that forward through their art, whether it’s sculpture or photography or painting,” he said of going through the submissions for this show. “The same principles applied to the quality of the artwork, but allowing for this freedom that artists don’t often have, to be able to create something of this nature and have it hung.”
“LibeRATED Forms” is a national exhibition opening Thursday and will be on display through Aug. 31, with a public reception scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday (guests must be 18 or older, with identification, and no photography will be allowed in the gallery during the exhibit). As part of the gallery’s 10th anniversary this year, Stillman wants to celebrate diversity and desire, calling for artwork that is body positive and sex positive to create a space for safe dialogue about sex and sexuality. There is work on display by more than 40 artists from multiple states across the country.
To talk about the themes of this show, along with Stillman, is Janna Dickenson, an assistant teaching professor at UC San Diego and licensed clinical psychologist whose research and work is focused on sexual literacy and sexual wellbeing. (These interviews have been edited for length and clarity. )
Q: Tell us about “LibeRATED Forms.” How did the idea for this exhibition come together?
Stillman: As part of the 10th year of the business, I really wanted to celebrate all year long and try some things that I felt I hadn’t done with the gallery before. I always hope that the gallery is able to observe the gaps in the arts community in San Diego and step up to kind of fill in those spaces. So often, I’ve either seen erotic art in spaces that are more like community hubs, like bars or small little arts moments in other spaces, but I’ve never really seen a strong, high quality art show locally in some kind that was related to erotic art, so I decided to create a national visual arts exhibition called “LibeRATED Forms,” and I wanted to celebrate diversity and desire by creating a safe space for dialogue and discussion around contemporary experiences of sex and sexuality. At the same time, really help artists uplift their marginal voices surrounding sex and sexuality and the spectrum of human experience.
Q: Why did you want to celebrate diversity and desire?
Stillman: I think that, if we go back in time to the ’50s and the censorship around Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” which was taken to court and he won, it was sort of a triumph for freedom of expression and really kind of ushered in a change, I think, in American arts. It allowed art to challenge, provoke, and explore the human experience. (Published in 1956, Ginsberg’s public performance of the poem led to a trial in 1957, in which a Bay Area district attorney wanted Ginsberg’s book, “Howl and Other Poems,” banned for obscenity because of the use of profanity, descriptions of homosexuality, drug use, and other language. The case was dismissed.) So, I wanted to use some of those same ideas and bring them into today’s world because I feel that freedom of speech in visual arts is still something that is tamped down. So, I wanted to give the artists that opportunity to be able to create what they wanted and set it in a nice gallery experience that elevates those ideas.
Q: When you think of body positivity and sex positivity, how do these things take shape in your imagination?
Stillman: I think one of the things that I’m trying to achieve with The Studio Door is to uplift marginalized voices and we have a constant flow of a certain pattern of sexuality that we see in the media, in marketing, in movies. I think it’s really important for representation, so I wanted people to be able to see themselves in ways that they’re not seeing themselves in the onslaught of online visuals or mainstream movies.
I think what we normally see is very much the male gaze upon the female form, and that vision is typically a Barbie-doll like body, almost unrealistic and not representative of women. I think that even when you move into a more homoerotic vision, you’re still seeing similar patterns where there’s this idealized masculinity and it isn’t representative. So, as a gay man, I feel it’s very important that we’re not ashamed of our sexuality, no matter whether you’re gay or not. We shouldn’t be ashamed of our sexuality and we should be proud of it and we should be able to embrace what that really looks like in the real world. I think that helps put people in a better mental state and to love themselves, as well.
Q: In your mind, is that leading to a place of greater self-acceptance?
Stillman: Absolutely. Sexuality is kind of this hidden thing that we don’t really like to talk about much in our society, even though we’re constantly seeing it fictionalized, and the reality is that everyone needs to come to their own terms of what that is for themselves. I’d like to create a space where people can dialogue about that and feel good about themselves.
Q: What role do you think art can play in boosting body and sex positivity?
Dickenson: I think art is a phenomenal mechanism to get our culture to be more, not just sex positive, but by emphasizing a sexual wellbeing perspective. I think that art has the power to change the way that we see the world. I think it allows us to connect and to relate to things that we may not have thought that we were able to relate to in a particular way. I think that it allows us to awaken to new perspectives. I think art is a really nice avenue for people to take in information and to also generate the aspect of reactions that we need in order to have open dialogues about sexuality.
Q: The prospectus for this exhibit says that one of the goals is to create a safe space for conversation centered around contemporary experiences of sex and sexuality. Why was this a topic you wanted to focus on? What are some ways that visual art has played a role in your own ability to discuss your experiences of sex and sexuality?
Stillman: As an artist, I think that I have an underlying need to share my life experiences through my art, so I really focus on figurative work that explores identity, and sexuality is a component of that. Throughout the themes of my work, I feel like, one, I am presenting an honesty to the viewers of my work and the patrons of my work; and, I’m hoping that, in a gallery setting, that younger people will see that work and realize that they have the freedom to create the life that they see fit. The exhibition is really an extension of some of those same things that I’m doing in my own art.
Q: Do you think that people conflate the two? What sets each one apart from the other?
Stillman: They are very close. I think understanding one’s own desire is a key component to understanding the body that we’re in and the mental state that we have through expression in a sexual manner. To me, sex is the physical act, and sexuality is really more closely tied to identity and understanding one’s self in the world.
Dickenson: There’s sex as in sex/gender, which is what is your bodily anatomy of sex differentiation? Or, what was your sex assigned at birth? The second thing that we’re probably talking about is a sex act, so your sexual activity. I like to define sexual activity as any activity, any behavior that has the potential to elicit sexual pleasure or sexual feelings. I like to use that definition because people who practice BDSM (and not just people who practice BDSM, but lots of different types of people), engage in behaviors that can be sexual without ever contacting the genitals. For example, a 13-year-old might experience a kiss and have all of this sexual pleasure, whereas we may not feel that way. Or, touching the arm might feel very, very sexual in a certain context, but it won’t necessarily feel the same way in a different context, so that’s what I think about when I define sex as any sexual activity that has the potential to elicit sexual feelings of pleasure.
Q: There’s been censorship seen in more formal art spaces, like museums and galleries, with regard to displaying erotic art, while socially we see sex all around us, particularly in the use of selling products. What is this dual obsession and discomfort we seem to collectively maintain toward sex and sexuality? What do you understand it to be rooted in? And, what does it look like to get to more balanced and healthy view of sex and sexuality?
Dickenson: On the one hand, there’s this aversion to sexuality, and then on the other hand, we see it everywhere. We fetishize sex, in a lot of ways. We objectify it and I sort of see that as when we objectify anything, we’re becoming a little bit more distanced from it. To me, it sort of becomes the other side of the coin, so to the extent that we are not in touch with our own feelings about sex and sexuality, the extent to which we don’t talk about it, is to the extent which we will also sort of become obsessed and fetishize it, too.
What would the world look like if we no longer had a taboo around sexuality, right? Great question. I think that people would feel freer to be who they are. There’s a lot of shame that we have around sex and sexuality and I think, on a practical level, we would experience a lot less shame. One of the things I see when I provide people with sexual information is their sexual shame automatically just goes down because they’re seeing that their own ideas, thoughts, fantasies, expressions are normative and other people experience them, too. I think that is what it would yield.
Q: Ideally, what kinds of conversations would you hope would come as a result of people visiting this exhibition?
Stillman: I think that because it’s an area that people don’t often freely discuss because they feel it’s taboo, or shameful, or simply private, I’m hoping that there are discussions about how universal the experience truly is, regardless of identity and sexual practice.
Dickenson: I think, like the curator, open dialogue. The more that we talk about sex, the better off we are as a culture because it’s not just the less sexual shame you have, but the more free you’ll feel about your own sex and sexuality. That, I think, is a major reason why going to an exhibit like this would be good for people, as an individual, but also for our society. The more open dialogue that we can have, the less taboo sex eventually will be. You get information, too, just from simply talking about sex with other people. It can be really enlightening and people often walk away from them talking about their sex life, feeling like they’ve been heard or that people can relate to them, and that feeling of being able to relate in your sexuality I think is very positive for your overall wellbeing.
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