"Banner X" - Collective exhibition: Erotismo en el s.XXI

My contribution to the collective "Guardar Como" more recent exhibition. It was designed for placing a tiny LED behind the hole, but photo quality when facing light off... ufff!

Note:  I've put into this artwork my thoughts about the proposed theme:"Erotism in the Twenty-First Century".  Here it's the verbal explanation, voilà!

First of all, if we focus on the drawing itself and it's details, there are some hidden hints. For example, as we all have this pandemic multitasking obsession affecting every domain of our life, in the image there is this woman handling the mouse with her foot. Therefore she has free hands, and she's able to press a button on the armchair's arm and touch the bottle's neck simultaneously. Both items are placed as shy metaphors about the female and male genitalia and the different sexual choices. On this way, she's sitting upon ancient furniture, making reference to the supposed novelty of the sex practices in the 21st century. However, we all have inherited this old prejudices about sexuality, and by extension about bodies. So I decided that, according to the contemporary beauty standards -but all at once sitting on the border of disgusting-, for me her figure had to be skinny. Although there was the doubt between overweighted or undersized, I've found more distinguishing of the modern age to encourage people to starve for looking 'desirable'.  In addition, she's passively wide open, just as globalised world is, as she stands as a an "erotism" and "21st century" symbol. 

On the other hand, light and technological elements are in relation with Internet and the huge weight of erotic content on the net. At least for me, with this new media, now is clearly the "Light Age", and I wanted that to be reflected on this canvas as well. The lighting and where it's placed it's also a wink on pixelation and other hypocrisies on the censoring methods, which -more than disguising presumed taboos- tend to get the opposite effect and attract the viewer. In my opinion, all this "spotting but letting go with a sign upon it" it's linked with the sexual liberation.  

However, we're still too shy to use the word "sex", so we use "erotism" instead. But more than erotism, the 21st century is about sex, about kicking off taboos and often pushing the limit till gross. Just because we can do it, and it's natural. Not beautiful content itself (as erotism used to be), just something 'recently' unbanned. Consequently, the composition it's a bit forced in a way that her body could remind to an X form. And I've hidden dozens of tiny 'x's on the armchair's surface, as a reference to the internet 'banners' trying to overload our brains and direct our will. It's interesting that nowadays we seem to have changed the 'bans' -telling us what we shouldn't- for the 'banners' -telling us what we shall-.