every cell met with instant ease
when i speak to myself i use the kindest language i can summon, i am allowed the same grace i give others
and once i gave myself permission i was radiant
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Barbara Nitke's 'American Ecstasy'
Throughout the show’s three month run, Nitke, who now teaches at SVA and works as a mainstream film photographer, has hosted several talks. On March 30, she and porn expert Casey Scott played clips from hardcore films that appear in American Ecstasy like Sexcapades (1983) and Viva Vanessa (1984), all by legend Henri Pachard. Nitke was his go-to photographer.
She entered the industry in 1982 through her husband, a financier who helped make The Devil In Miss Jones (1973). In 1982, Nitke started off as an on-set photographer working on Part Two. “I realized early on that I had access to this world, and I could do a documentary,” Nitke told me. “I saw it as an art project.” She struck a deal that she could pull slides, and did interviews on set.
“I did have a theory back then, that if you were going to do sex work, especially in front of a camera, you probably had a trauma in your life,” Nitke said, “which I totally disproved to myself.”
Every photo in American Ecstasy tells many tales, beginning in the stars they depict. One of the most striking shots in the show centers on Stacey Donovan, still fresh from Seventeen, riding her seated co-star reverse — her body poised mid-air precariously over his visibly glistening head. Donovan’s dirty blonde fringe obscures her downcast eyes, and the hands on her hips read defiant. “What I found interesting about her is she did not like sex,” Nitke remarked.
In White Women (1986), though — as we saw the night Nitke and Scott offered everyone an authentic porn dinner of soggy baked ziti — Donovan uses poppers to seduce a lovesick rockstar into fucking. She fakes an orgasm as he finishes, and when he promptly leaves, she desperately gets herself off. Nitke considers it a classic Pachard touch. She calls him “a sensitive guy who was also a shithead,” as well as a director who sought to portray female desire and experience.
Although porn migrated to meet LA’s pretty young starlets in the mid-80s, Pachard preferred seasoned performers like Sharon Mitchell and Vanessa Del Rio, both in American Ecstasy. One photo from Nasty Girls (1983) captures Mitchell before a moment of immense professionalism, where she improvisationally licked fluids from her necklace because her co-star accidentally busted outside of her mouth. Del Rio, seen flexing on stage, knew and demanded her worth.
These were hour-long films that fans had to leave home to buy. Although the plots that connected their sex scenes were flimsy, Nitke believes that if porn had been allowed to grow, it may have become an artform, like horror did. Instead, she witnessed prosecution from numerous angles — feminists like Andrea Dworkin, who saw porn as objectification and violence, alongside Jerry Falwell’s moral majority, who pushed the Reagan administration to pursue aggressive new venue shopping tactics while sticking obscenity suits on porn producers.
But, try as Mike Johnson’s “Covenant Eyes” might, vices prevail. For most who aren’t asexual or otherwise celibate, arousal is on the hierarchy of needs. And, like the rest of culture, the internet tessellated porn into infinite online niches. Some are exploratory and healthy, yet the wider machine says porn is giving teens hardcore tastes and dysmorphia. No wonder they’re not having sex. In a final blow of poetic justice, abstinence-only education IRL just makes porn more powerful.
Not that adults who had first kisses before Pornhub are much better off. I suffered when my middle school boyfriend called Megan Fox hot growing up, so the lover I brought to Nitke’s talk felt my hands sweat in his. Another colleague I ran into there walked out before it was over. We crossed paths again at a birthday party that night and discussed our various discomforts. In a world saturated with viscerally violent imagery, it’s fascinating that porn can still make people squirm. Nitke herself went through four literary agents and the illustrious editor Judith Reagan before self-publishing American Ecstasy in 2012 to avoid censoring its central hardcore stars.
As an exhibition, American Ecstasy encapsulates the fuzzy glamor of porn’s halcyon days. It can even get guests to check their baggage at the door by arresting them with the alluring abandon of a fledgling genre playing with the archetypal elements of sex, beauty and power, uninhibited.
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Unrequited at 59 Wooster Street
The Alexander Gallery is haunted by phantoms of the past. I imagine curating a show in a space like this is equivalent to checking in at the Chelsea Hotel, hosting a party at CBGD (impossible, thank you wholesale), or ordering the bacon burger at JG Melon. It’s a New York time capsule, nostalgically self-indulgent, and rightly so.
When you inherit a legacy like this, it's easy to fall into the trap of repetition. At times, this repetition is driven by pressure, a sense or honor, or frankly, fear. There's an anxiety about living up to whatever was achieved before you arrived — the feeling of stepping into shoes that are too big to fill but wearing them anyway. They might guide you down the same path, but that's precisely the issue. It takes more than just a hint of confidence (or naivete) to break free from this cycle.
Chris Lloyd, I Shall Cut Off My Eyelids To See Better, 2024.
Cristine Brache, Blue Mood, 2024.
“You’ve got to have a serious ego problem to own a gallery,” quips Alexander, presenting me with an unfiltered glimpse into his self-perception as a tastemaker. This prompts the question: do all artists share this trait? Beneath the imposter syndrome prevalent in many creatives lies a fundamental desire to be recognized, seen. Is this egoism, or perhaps a survival instinct?
The outcome of ego isn't what justifies Spy Projects’ arrival in New York. While it may be tempting to attribute it solely to Brooke Alexander being Pietro Alexander’s uncle, the truth is more nuanced. The exhibition stands independently, free from the weight of legacy or family ties. With almost effortless grace, the space's rich history now showcases both established and emerging artists, creatives united by a shared urge — a 'need,' as Apple describes it — to harness the remnants of New York’s post-industrial landscape, not just in their art, but in their very way of life.
Raymond Pettibon, Untitled (Hitchcock’s “the birds”…), 2024. Untitled (Shall I consider…), 2024.
Katherine Auchterlonie, Feuillet-Beauchamp Notation of a Good Make-Out Session, 2023.
Kay Kasparhauser, Blood, 2024.
It feels like a family affair. The curation doesn't try to impose a grand narrative by forcing artworks under an artificial title, a futile attempt to unify disparate artists. Unrequited is as enigmatic as it is purposeful — a title as blank as the gallery's walls, allowing for continual exploration. Each work stands distinct yet interconnected, except for instances where an artist submitted duplicates, strategically placed apart to evoke a thought-provoking contrast.
Textile collages by Alison Peery converse with Peter Alexander’s transition to velvet in 1984; Montana Simone’s pieces assert dominance not only in size but also through their assertive use of steel. Kay Kasparhauser’s medium evokes elements of hair, moss, and what the artist calls “Kay’s blood.” Malik Al Maliki’s outlandish treatment of woodblocks tempers the intensity within Raymond Pettibon’s expressive acrylics, while within Sasha Filimonov’s panel — reminiscent of Eastern European propaganda — the artist has incorporated a portable gun, which, when activated, is almost as arresting as the female figures concealed behind thick layers of wax in Cristine Brache’s works, blurring the line between dehumanization and a dream state.
Cristine Brache, Purple Bunnies, 2024.
Montana Simone, Choke Collar, 2024.
Sasha Filimonov, nightlight, 2024.
Unrequited is akin to being at a library but only reading a single page in each book, or scrolling through Netflix but only watching trailers. It's like waking up hungover at a brunch-buffet on a Sunday morning, finding yourself faced with croissants, bacon, ham, sausages, eggs, pancakes, bagels, cream cheese, avocados, bananas, blueberries, yogurt, etc, etc. But does it satisfy or does it leave you feeling overwhelmed and nauseous? A group show always presents a delicate balance.
Spy Project’s New York debut is not an imitation like the posturing mannequins at the adjacent flagship store, nor is it an attempt to mimic the legacy in which it finds itself ensconced. Rather, it offers a genuine experience devoid of pretense. Unrequited sits you down for family dinner, where conversations traverse generations, opinions vary, and no one hesitates to voice their views.
Before I left the gallery on Wednesday afternoon, Apple opened the window to invite neighbors smoking on the fire escape across the street to the opening the following evening. Despite seeming to have absolutely nothing in common, there they were, finding a connection.
- Photography by Daniel Arnold
Spy Projects, a contemporary art gallery in Los Angeles founded by Pietro Alexander in 2021, is temporarily visiting New York. The exhibition, Unrequited, will be on view until May 31st, 2024, at 59 Wooster Street.
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Wishing Well
Gal Schindler, Wishing Well, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Raised on the work of de Kooning, Lee Krasner and Milton Avery, Schindler’s work exudes a sense of fluidity and ambiguity. Further citing influences ranging from old-style Disney characters and antique botanical wallpaper, the artist combines a charming illustrative style with gestural strokes and a unique scratching technique to depict figures reclining languidly leaning in and against their pastel backdrops, merging into one indecipherable composition.
Gal Schindler, Fire Fountain, In the Meantime, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
At the heart of Schindler's practice lies an exploration of the human form. Her nudes serve as conduits for a multitude of emotions, embodying the fragility and mutability of the human, and particularly female, experience. Further drawing on influences from her childhood, the artist references intricately depicted anatomical drawings, her loose figures and strokes blurring the boundaries between flesh and canvas.
Undoubtedly spring-like in their palette, Schindler’s works are both optimistic and uplifting, with the artist referencing themes of renewal, regeneration and growth in her playful alternatives to traditional nudes depicted under a male gaze. There’s a sense of performativity, appealing to both a female and a younger gaze by creating fluid figures that defy categorization. Schindler’s paintings are sweet without being saccharine and sensual without being overtly sexual, instead, they occupy a liminal space between categories, appealing to anyone who may be a little ground down by moody palettes and sterile compositions. The transitory nature of Schindler’s composition speaks to the flux of the human form and an inability to contain and categorize the human form.
Gal Schindler, Live the Questions Now, Paint the Rain, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Gal Schindler, Crystal Clear, A Promise, 2024. Courtesy of the artist.
Wishing Well is a playful collection of fairy-tale figures that lean between sensual characters and traditional forms, with the transitory nature of the compositions creating a sense of impermanence that comes from the artist's unique technique of scratching into wet paint to create transitory forms. Schindler's works occupy a realm between landscape and figuration, where bodies float in a nebulous non-space. Beginning with instinctual colour planes, the artist overlays rapid structural lines, leaving behind traces of gesture and memory. The resulting figures blend seamlessly with their visual surroundings, their forms emerging from the depths of the canvas like reflections on still water, calling to mind the “Wishing Well’ in question. Life ripples on still water, Schindler’s figures remain distorted and alluring, half-emerging and half-hidden, they occupy somewhere between imagination and reality.
Wishing Well is on view at Ginny on Frederick, 99 Charterhouse St, Barbican, London EC1M 6HR, United Kingdom until May 24th, 2024.
