By Gianmaria Franchini
Levi Goldman’s bronze sculpture “Self-Portrait” shows a man in the throes of what could be erotic ecstasy or crippling agony. Mouth slightly parted in a grimace, eyes upward, and neck muscles tense and bulging, his powerful expression is difficult to define.
Goldman was one of nine UC Santa Cruz artists whose work was unveiled at the Autoerotic Man show at the Porter Bridge Gallery last Friday. The art is highly erogenous, but alongside the current of sexual energy emanating from the exhibition space runs an intellectual discourse.
“It’s not nudity, it’s beyond nudity,” said Satadru Sovan Banduri, artist and Fulbright Scholar. “It’s a space for ideas on fantasy, on pleasure.”
The exhibition’s primary purpose is to create a space for an open and continuing dialogue on gender roles and the modern male experience. Goldman, the self-titled director-curator, recruited three male friends from Porter College to collaborate so the four artists could use the Bridge Gallery. Though he has remained the organizing figurehead, the project took on a life of its own.
“It really gained momentum. I would mention the show and people would really get into it, to the point where I had to choose really carefully who was going to be involved,” Goldman said.
The collection of art showcases a broad range of styles and media, but thematically it centers on the concept of autoeroticism. Loosely defined, autoeroticism refers to physical and intellectual self-love. Although the term may be understood literally, it also denotes self-acceptance, even glorification –a grace note for unasserted males in an ego-driven world.
Some of the more interesting art espouses a certain anxiety over contemporary masculinity. Fourth-year art major David Castro’s “Auto Erotic Hero” employs violence and a steady diet of pop culture. In a stream of epic battle scenes woven together from movies like “Gladiator,” “Braveheart,” and “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back,” Castro’s video touches on a collective angst facing men who feel small compared to screen giants such as William Wallace and Darth Vader. The sequence never lets up, literally inundating the viewer with images of testosterone-fueled violence. “This is my take on what being male and what being a hero means for a young man growing up,” Castro said. “What it means to be brainwashed with images of war, and power, and getting the girl.”
The video is projected from an antiquated television set boxed into a tacky wooden frame. The dated television set was a purposeful decision: it reminded Castro of hours spent watching television as a child. According to him, the desire to form a heroic persona is rooted in childhood.
Banduri’s mixed media painting, “Breakfast,” is a stylized representation of barriers of desire, and raises a discourse of a different kind of anxiety. In sweeping frosty blue hues, “Breakfast” depicts a slim, bare female belly next to a seated faceless male digging hungrily into a bowl with a disarmingly red fork. Banduri is from New Delhi, and his work focuses on restricted sexuality and latent fantasizing endemic to his native India.
“In India, sexual desire is very tough to express,” Banduri said. “I want to imply that my breakfast is that sweet belly. I want to eat, I want to catch, I want to touch.”
Just as Goldman’s self-portrait offers viewers an expression of both pain and pleasure, the Autoerotic Man does not limit itself to projecting an unease men have with expressing self-love.
Sean-Michael Rau’s “Untitled” photograph series shows a statuesque man openly flaunting his sexuality, naked and unabashed. It is an uncompromised celebration of the male form, inviting the viewer to share in the confidence. A cryptic type-faced message is set next to the photographs: “These are the things we are even afraid to reveal to ourselves. I am my own voyeur.”
Goldman’s sculpture is the first work visitors to the gallery will encounter. It is also, perhaps, the exhibition’s most powerful precisely because its commanding expression is unequivocal. It blurs the line between pain and ecstasy, between shame and celebration, and does so with masculine grace.
“I was fascinated with the beauty of my own image,” Goldman said, in a voice that belied any arrogance. “I saw a man who was in ecstasy, and a man who was torn apart, who was holding the world up.”
_The Autoerotic Man will hold a closing reception on Saturday, Apr. 14 from 7-9 p.m. _
