solo exhibition featuring installation, photocollage, and performance, developed by Barcelona-based French multidiscipli
“No Soy Un Objeto Sexual” (I’m not a sexual object) reads the embroidered speech bubble, hanging from the ceiling of SomoS exhibition space. In Nathalie Rey’s eponymous solo exhibition, the objects are coming alive, and they want you to listen. Beware! The cute-looking objects, such as the pink stuffed rabbit in the corner, are not just passive elements. They have a life on their own. An autonomy. And, according to the artist, the capacity to take revenge on a subject that would have thought possessing them. In the centerpiece installation, a garden of plastic breasts and crocheted penises reminds us of the Earthly delights depicted in Dutch master Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings. Like that artist, Nathalie Rey’s art is allegorical, but refers to permission and liberation instead of tabooing. Developed during her artist residency at SomoS in Berlin, her exhibition addresses issues such as body politics, sexual identity, nudity, and the balance between freedom and censorship. With her study of the censorship during Franco’s dictatorship, and on a broader scale, the forms of censorship exercised throughout the History of Art, the artist grew interested in the prohibition that floats around nudity and sexuality. Playfully inhabiting the role of the censor herself, she cuts out the sexual parts from porn magazines and displays these mutilated images on the walls of the exhibition. But even with such serious topics, Rey maintains a playful approach to her themes and ways of working; for instance using subversive crafting, children’s books, and toys mixed with more adult topics and materials. Always keeping the objects at the very center of her interest.
Kottbusser Damm 95, 10967 Berlin