BFA Visual & Critical Studies presents “Playline III (Devotional Swell),” an exhibition of recent work by visual artist Gabriella Moreno (BFA 2016 Visual and Critical Studies).

“Playline III (Devotional Swell)” is part of a continued response to research done at the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago, IL. The work probes themes of power, devotion, and performance as it translates forms found in vintage professional dominatrix magazines and references the informal divination practice of scrying or peeping. In the context of this installation, peeping also relates to the peepshow, an erotic performance where the viewer is voyeur. This work is meant to be a meditation on desire and its ability to imbue into what we crave.

The artist has written the following statement:

“The erotic and discipline exist on some sort of spectrum. Discipline, made possible through commitment, can function through devotion. Is all devotion heteronomy? Or could it be something more similar to the feral moment where you and I swallow the room? Could we learn discipline through the repetition of laughing? Humming? Kissing? Pleasure and pain exist on a spectrum too. Pain can throb through our bodies like a warning, echo in our muscles for decades, show up as knots in our backs. True pain is punitive, it compounds, clogs, it persists to trap. Pleasure swells, spills out, sets loose. Pleasure repeats differently. It warmly traces our body all day, all week, remembering, savoring what it can. It gives. Pleasure vibrates, synchronizes, allows for mutations in its pattern to occur. Its subtle discrepancies are prism like—where forms are refracted at different angles, each plane giving a slightly different rendering of its light. Pleasure’s idiosyncrasies reach toward one another like fingers searching for another’s interdigits. ”

For further information, contact Gabriella Moreno at gabriellamorenoxix@gmail.com.

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