Pheromone Hotbox
Steven Kasher Gallery
515 West 26th Street, New York, NY 10001
January 22 – February 28, 2015
Steven Kasher Gallery, in conjunction with Kasher|Potamkin, presents Pheromone Hotbox. The exhibition showcases the work of five young women photographers: Aneta Bartos, Amanda Charchian, Shae Detar, Olivia Locher, and Marianna Rothen. Each artist will be represented by approximately ten photographs from their recent work, all of the images portraying women. These young artists share a common method of bringing themselves and their friends to a location where they enact loosely scripted narratives, usually in the nude. These photographs address notions of the post-selfie and confront post-feminist ideologies.
The concept “pheromone hotbox” was originated by Amanda Charchian, who writes: “The understood biological purpose of pheromones is creation. In addition to reproduction in the organs, creation manifests itself for the female artist as an expanded conduit for communication of pheromones between spiritual and material realms. Exuding from the female psyche, these images become an imprint from this hotbox of uninhibited vision. The tension created by sending these pheromones into a biologically confounded process is specific to photographing another woman intimately.”
Aneta Bartos portrays a world populated by strong, beautiful, ethereal women full of desire and menace. She creates haunted places where spectral creatures perform acts of ambiguous sexuality. The viewer is challenged to join the strange rites, or to run away in horror. Amanda Charchian travels with her girlfriends to gorgeous settings by the sea or in the desert. In her world clothing is always optional, and an atmosphere of trust and mischievousness rules. Shae Detar photographs her models in bucolic settings where they disrobe singly or in formation. She paints on her photographs, transforming them into Pop utopias or Pre-Raphaelite dreams. Olivia Locher is an art photographer not afraid to break the convention of seriousness. Her work combines exaggerated color with quirky inventiveness in the mode of Rube Goldberg. Her naked models are playful and happy. Marianna Rothen scripts vague narratives based on the movies of Brigitte Bardot, Monica Vitti, Catherine Deneuve, Claudia Cardinale, and Faye Dunaway. She takes her actress/models/friends to scouted locations and costumes them in bad wigs (and very little else). Her characters are often depressed women trying to break free, innocents in a less than innocent world.
