St Louis, MO
3/21/15 2:03 PM
Intimacy is a game of reveal and conceal, depending on who’s playing. In a group of works by Catalina Ouyang—a video projection, a pair of towering metal sculptures and two framed mixed media pictures—the artist tests different methods of interpersonal knowing for their erotic potential. The video presents a three-minute loop of dense black-and-white imagery, a surrealist mélange that includes a nude male torso, a young person’s bedroom and the bottom half of a body wearing underwear, all of it more or less distorted by shimmers of light and reflection. The sculptures, aluminum magazine racks that promise to fold down and conceal their contents compactly, display long transparent images of nude bodies, an onanistic man and an intertwined couple. The framed pictures mostly show washy color fields, but squinting suggests boudoir images hidden beneath, although peepholes cut in their surface only show young men, their backs turned. The artist notes that much of this imagery comes from her own Skype screenshots, but despite that personal reveal, the work in its obfuscation mostly conceals.
—Lori Waxman