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LoveSexy: Identity and Desire in the MCA Collection

Images

Mel Ramos, Zebra, 1970. Oil on canvas; 80 x 70 in. (203.2 x 177.8 cm), framed: 82 3/4 x 70 5/8 x 2 in. (210.2 x 179.4 x 5.1 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Beatrice Cummings Mayer, 1991.88

Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago
a woman stands holding an unidentifiable object looking just past the camera

Cindy Sherman, Untitled Film Still #14, 1978.
Gelatin silver print; sheet: 10 x 8 in. (25.4 x 20.3 cm), framed: 16 3/8 x 14 1/2 x 1 1/2 in. (41.6 x 36.8 x 3.8 cm).
Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Lannan Foundation, 1997.56

Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

About

This exhibition features works from the MCA Collection that provide various perspectives on the always shifting nature of sexual desire and identity in culture and society. The work in Lovesexy ranges from Mel Ramos's 1970 painting Zebra, which wavers between celebration and critique of the pop cultural consumption of the naked female form, to Jeanne Dunning's Toe-Sucking Video(1994), a jarringly straightforward combination of onanism, fetishism, infantile sexuality, and endurance in one videotaped performance. Other artists in the exhibition include Matthew Barney, Vanessa Beecroft, Rebekah Levine, Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, Karen Kilimnick, Catherine Opie, Jack Pierson, Daniela Rossell, and Cindy Sherman.

Funding

This exhibition is generously sponsored by Margot and George Greig.