Stux Gallery, New York is pleased to announce “Dangerous Pleasures”, an exhibition of new works by Shimon Okshteyn. A cacophony of visual abundance and the excessive aesthetics of pleasure and pain are at the heart of Dangerous Pleasures, which features hyper-realistic paintings, sculpture and mixed media installations. The exhibition will be on view from October 23rd through December 6th, 2008, and will be accompanied by a full color catalogue with an essay by Dominique Nahas.
In these massively scaled works, Okshteyn sustains a heightened involvement with reflective surfaces, such as glass and mirror, to suggest a dynamically invasive sense of self-monitoring, as well as the enlargement, distortion and splintering of the self under pressure. The artist expands upon his signature mimetic representations of Old Master paintings as well as objects culled from every day life to suggest specific moments in time, invoking disorientating tableaus from which a myriad of possible narratives emerge.
The profoundly confessional nature of Okshteynʼs painting is further emphasized by the inclusion of life-sized cast marble renditions of the artistʼs own nude body (surrogates for the artist) measured, despairingly, against the now mythologized achievements of art history giants. Sitting on the precipice between pain and pleasure, the artist has created in these works complex hybridizations that confuse distinctions between time and place, real and unreal. In further mining the surface of our shared reality, Okshteyn delves into the distinctiveness of his own fantasies, drives, appetites, fears, and desires.