Exhibition Review: Marilyn Minter "All Wet" and Betty Tompkins "Raw Material"
Lilith, Enamel on metal, 2018-2021, Courtesy of the artist, Salon 94, New York and Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Marilyn Minter
Written By Andy Dion
From June 26 to Sept. 5, MO.CO. Montpellier will provide a temporary home for the work of Marilyn Minter and Betty Tompkins, two zeniths of feminist visual art. To display such a large volume of Minter and Tompkins’s work is a rare event and an incredibly deserved moment for both artists. The exhibitions illuminate points of convergence and divergence between the artists’ styles, a sensual spatial conversation between works of art. This is Tompkins’s France debut— a notable occurrence considering the controversial nature of her work.
Behind misty glass stands a nude woman, obscured by condensation, baring it all yet rejecting the male gaze in Marilyn Minter’s latest series, All Wet. Minter celebrates the body, its mystery, addressing societal contentions with a different side of tenderness, focusing on the nape of her subjects’ necks, delicate skin, the underlying sin of want. “Star Tattoo” focuses on the showering woman’s metallic 5-point star tattoo placed between her shoulder blades, her red lips, and segments of damp hair. The concept of the bather here contradicts historical depictions of the open air bathhouse because Minter’s viewpoint is situated behind a foggy glass shower panel, obscuring her subject. “Ginger” offers suggestions of nudity while quite literally clouding the body with condensation collected on the glass. Images that show more textured detail of the subject involve the moisture on glass being brushed away or the subject leaning close to the glass, like in “Big Breath” where she ebbs on kissing it. These subtle moments reveal the underlying suppleness of Minter’s work.
Star Tattoo, Enamel on metal, 2020-2021, Courtesy of the artist, Salon 94, New York and Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Marilyn Minter
In addition to the steamy images from All Wet, Minter presents her 2009 video titled Green Pink Caviar. Echoing the glass foreground of the other images on display, the video shows lips licking, kissing, and playing with sparkling fluids on a transparent surface. While the aforementioned bather is obscured by condensation, slime and caviar conceals the disembodied lips. The video’s presence in this exhibition ties connections between Minter’s works over a decade.
Pussy Painting #31, Acrylic on canvas, 2017, Courtesy of the artist, P•P•O•W, New York and rodolphe janssen, Bruxelles © Betty Tompkins
Renowned for pornography-inspired paintings subjected to numerous censorships since 1969, Betty Tompkins makes her France debut with 50 works from the past decade. Her hazy photorealistic paintings exalt the surfaces of the human form, pondering its natural allure and wonder. Tompkins invokes a sense of lust lurking behind soft murky fog, painting pudenda bared to the beyond. The images contain a tenderness yet come loaded with controversy that followed Tompkins for her entire career, grappling with them through graphic and liberating artworks. A vast selection of these images like “Pussy Painting #31” don a cold black-and-gray palette, giving the genitalia an x-ray effect, as if being scanned by a judgmental gaze. The scale of these paintings become larger than life and their realism blooms beyond the haze, giving the viewer realistic views of bodies. Tompkins confronts the pervasive conversation of censorship in her work with “Collage #3,” covering just about all parts of a sex scene except for the penetration. Seeing these images in a public space is an uncommon occurrence and a huge testament to the power of Tompkins’ vision.
Big Breath, Enamel on metal, 2016, Courtesy of the artist, Salon 94, New York and Regen Projects, Los Angeles © Marilyn Minter
Minter and Tompkins encapsulate liberating feminist attitudes with visual art that complements each other magnificently in physical space. Minter’s veiled nudes reclaim a softness and privacy unexpected in bare-skinned images. Tompkins’ unhindered views of genitalia exposes age-old double standards still set upon society today. This yin-yang of femininity and humanness exposes the lack of compassion societal standards place on bodies by showing the gentleness of the carnal and the lush simplicity of bareness.
While these exhibitions are open for viewing, Minter and Tompkins will be releasing accompanying publications respectively titled All Wet and Raw Materials, available for preorder now.
