The addictive nature of desire described in 5 art works

The contours of desire are tenuous: arousal does not necessarily have to fall into the sexual realm—it can be as innocent as craving a piece of chocolate. But just as desire can be childlike and carnal, it can also inspire feelings of disgust and aversion. SQUISH, a new group show at Efremidis Gallery in Berlin, questions the encounter between desire, aromanticism, revulsion, and art. The tantalising works of Carlotta Bailly-Borg, Christiane Blattmann, Lindsay Lawson, Teresa Solar and Jens Kothe test the limits of temptation. 

Curators Carlota Ibañez de Aldecoa Silvestre and Julie Gaspard finalised the concept for the exhibition after seeing a curious work by German artist Jens Kothe. Kothe’s furry bench-like object prompted feelings of “wanting to touch but also to not” in the curators. This uncanny combination of disgust and enticement are the building blocks for SQUISH—“at the beginning the works are all beautiful but the more you look the less angelic everything becomes,” says Gaspard.

Below, we take a look at some of the exhibiting works to see what they can teach us about desire, and all its complexities. 

1. Desire as an addiction

Desire causes dependency—just like love, it can consume individuals fully. The bodies in Carlotta Bailly-Borg’s series Chit-Chat (‘L’Aube’, Le Crépuscule, L’Aurore) are genderless, androgynous beings that morph into each other. Gaspard describes the series as “creepy because it’s that kind of love where you lose yourself”. Indeed, these paintings emanate a co-dependent energy. Without exception, the pairs in each painting face each other while their arms and legs melt and interlace; they mirror one another. In L’Aurore, this is particularly assailing, one of the figures smokes a cigarette, and though the other holds nothing between their fingers, they’re still perched up: ready to receive. They crave the lover’s cigarette just as they would a caress or a kiss: their desire an addiction.

2. Desire as organic

Desire cannot be confined; it is a beguiling experience which evades self-control and societal expectations. Teresa Solar’s installation Everything is OK is disarming exactly because of this: the magnificent pink glazed ceramic tube, like an intestine or a vagina, leaves traces of itself along the exhibition floor. For Ibañez de Aldecoa Silvestre, its impact became clear when at the opening she overheard a visitor sigh “I wish I could just touch it”. The remnants of the central piece are strewn like a snake’s skin, and provoke, as Gaspard suggests, a “visceral reaction” in the viewer. The aluminium structures that attempt to hold it in place are superfluous. The abundant organicism of desire eludes all control.

3. Desire as pain

Desire has long been connected to agony. The moral lines of consensual pain infliction as a form of foreplay and arousal are a source of fascination to many. Lindsay Lawson’s four ceramic vases perched along the staircase of Efremidis are part of her series Stranglers. They “border on the fetish … they walk the line between pain and pleasure,” explains Ibañez de Aldecoa Silvestre. Their rough texture contrasts wildly with the hand imprints on their ‘necks’. These suffocation dents are left behind like love bites, the physical evidence of passion. In the work, asphyxiation is an experiment, each indentation revealing a different form of strangulation. The forbidden aspect of Stranglers is overpowering and entrancing, it becomes ever so tempting to grip and break the vases too. Not only do they evoke desire, but they also manage to provoke it in an violent, guttural and uncomfortable way.

4. Desire as voyeurism

Desire, unlike love, is triggered by observation. You fall in love with a personality, but you lust after a body. This act of seeing, consuming with the gaze, turns us all, to an extent, into voyeurs. Standing in front of Jens Kothe’s Stressed Membranes II, Gaspard comments ‘I’m surprised no one touched it at the opening” to which Ibañez de Aldecoa Silvestre quickly retorted, “I’m sure they did, we just didn’t see it,” adding “you just want to stick your finger or peer inside”. The visible and the unknown are at play in all of Kothe’s work but, in this one in particular, the crevices and nooks, which expose the inner workings of the sculpture, turn the viewer into a gazer. The exposed materials—foam, silicone—clue the viewer into the artist’s process. Tantalising and seductive, the work invites you to look further, but inside the small holes there’s nothing to be found. It draws you into an abyss of nothingness, at once fixating and frustrating, just like desire.

5. Desire as abandonment 

Orgasm is ordinarily portrayed as a beautiful moment of vulnerability when people let themselves go. When, in reality, it is a moment of rawness: faces become disfigured, contractions, screams, grunts and moans possess the body. Desire is imperfect and violent, Bailly-Borgs’s ceramic series Mammals captures the corporeal intensity of this. After sculpting vases on a potter’s wheel, the artist throws them on the floor and scratches faces into them. The result are grimaces on the edge of pain and pleasure. It is a matter of perspective, as Ibañez de Aldecoa Silvestre explains: one side of the profile may evoke pain but the other, intense pleasure.

SQUISH runs through to 18 April at Efremidis Gallery.