Cobi Moules, Conceptual Realist, at Lyons Wier Gallery in Chelsea

Lyons Wier Gallery has established itself as one of the premier New York City art galleries promoting “conceptual realism.” Conceptual realism is to be contrasted with photo-realism or super-realism. In super-realism (a movement created in the 1960s), the artist often starts with an actual photo and painstakingly reproduces that image (usually) on a canvas. The reaction of a normal viewer to a work of super-realism is often: “Is that a painting!? It looks like a photo!” The second question is invariably, “Why did he/she do that?” or “Wow, how long do you think it took for that artist to paint this?” 

An example of super-realism (Richard Estes):

That’s not to imply that super-realistic paintings are not without meaning or relevance. A person could argue that a super-realist was/is, basically, doing what Vermeer did – capturing and focusing on one instant in the flow of time to engender a better sense of the greater meaning of that moment and, perhaps, to better convey the transitory nature of our lives.

Conceptual realism, however, plays with realism to deliberately convey a greater meaning or concept. The work of Cobi Moules, in his show at Lyons Wier - Bois Just Wanna Have Fun - is a great example of conceptual realism. When you first look at one of his paintings in this show, you seem to see a huge mass of boys foraging around, standing around, rooting round or horsing around in an amazing landscape. Indeed, you might even mistake his pieces for examples of super-realism, until you look closely.

All the boys are, in fact, Cobi Moules. In fact, Moules’ paintings might be superficially interpreted as a wry commentary on the notion of trying to capture one moment in a super-realist piece. Moules seemingly captures many discrete moments within one landscape on one canvas. Indeed, one might feel an amazing contrast between the permanent and the transitory in each painting. Each particular landscape will be there for thousands of years (if not more), yet Moules, or anyone else wandering through, might be considered but a poor player strutting and fretting his hour upon the stage. The enormity of time each landscape will exist creates a sense of permanence or eternity which readily contrasts with the brief moment of our lives.

But Moules is shooting for more than this contrast between the permanent and the temporary – indeed, he seems to be fighting against this. After all, what’s more important: the actor or the stage? Moules’ pieces are, in fact, a wry commentary on the historically significant Hudson River School of painters, who can be considered, according to Moules, to be ideologically linked to certain strains of orthodox Christianity which condemn queer and transgender folks like himself as being ‘unnatural.’

Orthodox Christianity and the Hudson River School might have been saying, “Cobi, you don’t even belong on this stage!”, but Moules relishes his presence and exults in his multiple performances, engaging himself within a context of nature which DOES accept him. Moules' work shows that the stage and the actor are inseparable and that the diversity of human types on the stage of nature is a welcome presence.

Here's an example of Hudson River School painting.  I'm not an expert on it, so I am not sure that I can agree that there might have been homophobic ties between it and orthodox Christianity.  I think I understand Moules' argument, though, I guess.  Basically here's what he said in the press release from Lyons Wier Gallery: 

"I see a number of ideological links between their [Hudson River School] works and a specific current American Christian culture that was an integral part of my formative years; particularly in regards to ideas of purity and the honor of sacrificing one's selfhood for the glory of God. As a queer and transgender person, I seek to renegotiate my relationship with this upbringing and the act of being told I am 'unnatural' through such a pointed Christian lens."

Hudson River School stuff:

Secret Garden: Process Art by Moon Beom at Kim Foster Gallery

Secret Garden #320 by Moon Beom (courtesy Kim Foster Gallery):

Everyone is familiar with Jack the Dripper - Jackson Pollock.  Pollock literally walked around and over his canvases as he dripped paint on them with a stick.  

In the video above Pollock states that he wants to "...express..." his "...feelings and not illustrate them."  This is the essence of what has become called 'process art.'  A process artist does not have a particular image in mind when he begins a painting. He feels a psychological need to 'act' or convey.  The result of the painting is due to a spiritually or psychologically initiated process within the painter.  In fact, Pollock compares his style to that of Native American sand-painters.  The painting reflects the process, yet the image is often amazingly complex and engrossing and it challenges the viewer to a deeper than normal level of interpretation.  

Moon Beom is within this process artist tradition. He doesn't use a stick like Pollock, however - he uses his bare hands.  First he covers a canvas with one color of acrylic paint - indeed, he seems to like using either very 'cool' or very 'hot' colors.  He then takes an oil stick - basically a crayon of solid oil paint - and smudges the canvas with it.  He then begins rubbing into this smudge and spreading it around the canvas.  By doing this over and over - like massage! - he creates very bizarre looking images.  It's hard to find an exact parallel but the Kim Foster Gallery refers to the images as being 'lettuce-like.'  They seem like strange tissue-like images suspended in artificial relationships to each other.

Believe it or not, there is actually a type of study called "the psychology of color" and researchers have found that light green is the most soothing color to us (the color of nature) while red is the color that excites us the most.  People in red rooms have experienced increases in blood pressure just due to that color.  Above we see Moon's Secret Garden #320 and the overall effect is calming. In Secret Garden #540, we see a more fiery image dominated by two phallic looking structures.

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Did you know that in ancient Chinese culture, color was sometimes used as a form of 'chromotherapy' to heal physical ailments? The color red was used to increase blood circulation, for instance, while some of the cooler colors were felt to help end or decrease physical pain.

Moon's tissue-structures are, basically, the remains or residue of his physical motion. And they look like residue, although you'd have to call them quite elegant forms of residue. These look neither organic nor inorganic. They are like lovely waste by-products. The force and velocity of his movements in relation to the canvas become the elements of the language of the work, as do the color choices. Moon works in agitating or pacifying hues, in forceful or subtle movements. His movements are long or short, quick or lengthy. It's almost as if he is suggesting, through his new and unique approach to process art, that the 'real' language of our inner lives consists of such binary and opposing combinations.  

Someone made a short video of the opening.  So if you are in a far-away place, here's a little bit of what a NY art gallery opening looks like:

Paul Kolker's Light and Mirror Boxes

Paul Kolker has one of the coolest spaces for an art gallery in Chelsea.  In order to get to the gallery space you have to travel down a couple zig-zag flights of stairs to an underground area which looks and feels like an art bunker.  Or you can be more pragmatic and just take the elevator. Take the elevator and lose the experience of descending into Kolker's light and mirror wonderland? Never!

From Kolker's web site: http://paulkolker.com/about/

"In the 1980s Kolker began making light sculptures using one-way mirror and LED message screens, reflecting ad infinitum." 

To me it's like electronic Malevich.  He takes very simple geometric shapes and using just 6 mirrors per thin box creates a theoretical view of infinity. Or, you could even say he gives you a visceral sense of infinity.  The endless repetition of the basic image creates a three dimensional structure that perpetuates itself endlessly until the repetition is lost to our vision. Infinity then becomes something lacking light and structure. His work gives you a sense of beauty and a type of vertigo at the same time.

It's better to look into one of Kolker's boxes yourself, since a camera cannot capture the sense of depth and space Kolker's lights and mirrors create.  Nevertheless, my friend Eunyoung Oh did a great job taking these photos.

Looking into one of Kolker's boxes gives you the sense you are looking into a dark and endless electronically created tunnel. 

The repetition of the images also creates a crystalline form.  The image below could be perceived as anything from an atomic structure to a stained glass window of a church.



Edward del Rosario at The Nancy Margolis Gallery

Nancy Margolis traditionally has very thought-provoking and imaginative pieces at her gallery in Chelsea.

I found the work of Edward del Rosario to be amazing.  I wasn't able to get good photos of his work because the surface of his paintings is very glossy (he creates a beautiful sheen on his canvases) and so it was impossible to take photos without getting reflections from the gallery lights. I would recommend a trip to the Margolis Gallery at any time, because she consistently puts up amazing stuff!

 

Margolis writes that del Rosario paints "imaginary characters in stage-like environments" and that the work is deliberately "enigmatic." 

In the piece above, we see that some figures look over a type of parapet at a few folks of varying types who seem to have differing relations to the fort-like structure.  Among the figures outside are some who are simply dressed and wearing masks while some figures (from a rival or neighboring fort?) are elaborately dressed and circling the fort.

There's a definite class structure among the folks inside the fort - one guy is wearing a crown while two women are dressed as maids and there seems to be one military guy - and the beautifully dressed folks walking outside the fort seem to have a class structure as well (one is also crowned).

The three simply dressed figures seem more egalitarian in orientation. The two male figures, with masks, seem to be acting furtively, while the topless female character ingenuously stands watching after having gathered some type of food. Has she been caught in the act of 'poaching' (along with the male figures) by the approaching figures?  Is she a decoy to distract attention? Just what is going on here?  The "indigenous" two male figures have cans of gasoline and one of the approaching figures, with an elaborate dress, carries a fire on the end of her stick.

The piece is called "Civilization II," in fact, and it almost looks like an allegory on state development or 'tribal conflict' based on something like Fukuyama's The Origins of Political Order.  What I liked is the ambiguity of the story and relationship of the figures, but also the implication that once you urbanize, a totally different culture is created that embraces and reifies social class while concomitantly promoting the ideals of freedom and equality as a type of social lubricant (you have a type of common identity and equality of social obligation on the parapet - everyone is keeping watch). 

The religion of 'outsiders' or 'rural dwellers' often involves intense social bonding, self-sacrifice and a relationship of the whole society to nature.  The religion of 'cities' is traditionally a religion of tolerance, harmony and individual self-development within a structured social group. 

However, folks outside of this social group are often perceived as a 'threat' and the toleration, harmony and brotherly love are often not applicable to them.  When Ho Chi Minh visited Paris and New York, he was amazed by the rights that even very poor people had within those societies.  He was also appalled by how heartless the French and Americans were to his own society.  This seems to be the most salient message to me from the work of del Rosario.


Here's a link to the gallery. It's been one of my favorites for a long time. http://nancymargolisgallery.com/
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Me in my art hat...yes I know I need to drop a few pounds...

 

 

 

Does this mural in Chelsea reflect a sexual assault?

Actually, it's kind of hard to see from this distance but this is a version of the iconic photo from the end of WWII - taken in Times Square. 

Thousands of tourists who walk along the Highline Park in Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood see this mural every day.

Does anyone else think this image is problematic?  I'm not sure this is an appropriate image to be emblazoned on a giant wall in Chelsea. 

Indeed, last year a few people began publicly criticizing the iconic photo on which this mural is based:

http://jezebel.com/5949555/iconic-vj-day-photograph-sailor-kiss-decried-as-depiction-of-sexual-assault

I tend to agree.  Basically this sailor just grabbed a woman and kissed her.  If you look at his body and her body, this looks like a very forceful event in which she simply did not have any choice.  He's basically taking her against her will and forcing himself on her. Looking at it last night, it didn't seem to be the cheerful 'war is over' image I had remembered it to be.  I think this was a bad choice of images by the artist Kobra.

 

 

Furthermore, I would argue they are celebrating the end of the war as if an athletic team just won a championship.  Lots of people died, atomic bombs were dropped and this type of celebration just seems inappropriate to me.  Maybe I'm a prude but a World War II 'celebration' might have been "more honored in the breach" (to quote from Hamlet).  Maybe a prayer service and not a sexual assault in Times Square would have been a better 'celebration.'  

 

When I looked at the mural last night it really bothered me and I was happy to see that others have had the same response in the past (although not many).  I just think it's a problematic image on a bunch of different levels.

 

Artists are no longer socially progressive? They don't analyze images? They don't question what they see?

 

The woman in the photo later said this for a book about the kiss:

 

"It wasn't my choice to be kissed...The guy just came over and grabbed me!"

"I felt that he was very strong. He was just holding me tight. It wasn't a romantic event."

Art as ruse: Bruce Sargeant (aka Mark Beard) at ClampArt

One day I wandered into ClampArt and saw the walls covered with large homo-erotic oil paintings that seemed to be a strange cross between realism and expressionism.  The young male bodies were intricately detailed (as only a true lover of male flesh could probably accomplish) but the skin tone was often a not-so-subtle blending of flesh tone and grayish green.  Looking at the name of the artist and the date of each painting, it seemed that they had been painted by someone named Bruce Sargeant before his death in 1938.

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It was such a unique style of painting for that time, with such over-the-top, seething love for the male body, merged at the same time with an apparent pessimism toward the flesh, that I was amazed I hadn't seen this person's work in various museums.  When I asked the owner of the gallery why Bruce Sargeant was not to be found in museums as an example of how German expressionism might have influenced American realists, he let me in on the "secret." 

Apparently Mark Beard (a contemporary artist) has created his own "dead artist" series. He paints in four or five different styles, purporting to be fictional artists from the past. In the show I saw, there were 'new' paintings by the 'dead' artists Hippolyte-Alexandre Michallon and his disciple Bruce Sargeant.

I'm featuring work by Sargeant today.

A young man, in the blossom of youth, muscles rippling, the moment before he commits suicide with a shotgun.

Well, you get the picture. 

Why is Beard doing this?  I can be somewhat cynical, and so my first thought was, you know, these paintings can't really stand on their own, outside of their 'conceptual' function.  As paintings from the 1930s they would be remarkable (as examples of a certain bizarre type of 'dark' style - not normally found in US art at that time), but as paintings now, they, obviously, don't work (but, of course, they are not meant to work as contemporary pieces, they are parodies). 

So, in any case, I initially felt this artist should be creating his own work, and not falling back on a conceptual gimmick. Well, that was my first thought. Actually, now I think the gimmick works, it's pretty funny and it's pretty thought-provoking too. Indeed, it's brilliant.  It has changed the way I look at a lot of art now, so that's an amazing thing for an artist to accomplish.

Superficially, Beard seems to have created a type of parody of trends in art, or the process which I've written about before - how do artists become famous, how do they get 'selected' to be great artists? Having done a little research, it seems that all of Beard's fictional artists stick to one style of painting and this style becomes their 'brand.'  You can recognize a Michallon from a Sargeant easily.  Branding your art becomes essential to success.  People need to look at a piece and immediately say, "That's a Koons!" or "That's a Pollock!"   

Beard seems to be pointing out (from what I've read) that, in the past, artists often went through various developmental stages and experimented with various styles. Now, to feed the needs of the art buyers, you develop until you hit something new and then that's that - that's YOUR style.  There's no further need to develop - you are at the place you need to be. Now produce, produce and produce some more of the same stuff and start smoozing it up to promote yourself.

Interestingly, from what I've read online, Beard is in some major museums.  He's in the museums, however, because this ruse of his is felt to be so clever. Could he have gotten into the major museums without this little ruse? Possibly, if he had wanted to, but the reason he's in the big places seems due to the 'joke' he is playing in regard to art. 

The irony, of course, is that if Beard is mocking artist 'branding,' this mocking is now Beard's own 'brand.'  If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.

Of course, there are deeper levels of parody in this art work as well.  For instance, it could be that Beard is poking fun at how an artist's inner obsessions or anxieties can be so readily transferred to the canvas.  Why have there been so many female nude paintings in the history of art, for instance?  

OK, a naked woman might represent something symbolically and one could even argue that the artists were experimenting by drawing the human figure.  Or it could be that there have been lots of horny dogs among the great masters.

Walking into ClampArt for this show, I immediately realized I was looking at art by a gay man.  Indeed, there was no denying that this guy was flaming  (the fictional artist was flaming).  Beard goes way overboard (I can see this now that I know the joke/secret) in conveying this.  Indeed, the pessimism reflected in the greenish tones or in the paintings of young men attempting violent suicide might be interpreted as a response to the lack of understanding and outright hostility toward gay folks during that time.   

Beard, like a type of novelist, creates a gay artist working during a time when homosexuality was considered a mental illness and when you could probably get lynched for being gay.  We see the work of a conflicted person - he cannot help but express his true nature, but it is expressed dolefully. 

So here's where I think I get Beard's "joke."  When we go to an art museum, we don't think, 'Oh I'm going to go see the sensual obsessions of the socially-repressed and anxious homosexual Michaelangelo.'  Nor do we think, "Ah, I wanna go see the unresolved sexual conflict that artist x lived with his whole life."  You expect to see 'art' but sometimes the artist presents something a little more (or less) than art on the canvas and he (she too?), apparently can't help it. It just pours out.

So you've got sexual conflicts, concerns, obsessions and anxieties on canvases all throughout the history of art (Guido Reni's St. Sebastian?  Any St. Sebastian!? Looked at anything by Caravaggio lately? Munch's women as 'vampires?' Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon? etc.) and people often don't even recognize this.  Indeed, if Sargeant had been a 'real' 1930s artist, unknowing, non-gay-friendly critics of the time might have missed the obviously gay orientation completely.  

The focus on virile, rippling young men would have been interpreted as the artist's emphasis on American strength of character or the virile, male brawn that will pull us out of the Depression.  Or, maybe Beard is pointing out that you are only going to get this type of art during periods of oppression for gay people. If folks could openly experience their sexuality and represent it freely, you wouldn't get it in such a sublimated form on canvas. 

We don't think of some of the German expressionists or the surrealists as working out their heterosexual and/or sado-masochistic demons on canvas, we consider this great art. I think that's the big joke Mark Beard is telling.  Art has always been a canvas for the exploration of the artist's own sexual inclinations, anxieties and development.  Sure a lot of art is meaningful in a non-sexual manner.  But there's an awful lot of sex stuff that people are not catching.

Read the thoughtful essays of Daniel Gauss on Good Men Project: https://goodmenproject.com/author/daniel-gauss/

Buy Gauss a coffee! It's one of his simple pleasures: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/danielgaus6

Jill Greenberg: Horses and Swimmers

I like horses in art.  To me, the horse is a symbol of transition.  By transition, I mean transition within our inner reality as well as transition in our external reality.  Symbolically, the horse represents what gets you from one (rotten?) place to another (better?) place.  It takes you from a place of turmoil and conflict to your own hearth.  It leads you into and out of battle; it helps you escape, engage in some adventure or go home. 

St. George kills the dragon while on horseback.  Here's one version by Uccello.

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Indeed, throughout the history of western art, the horse has played an essential role in many amazing works of sculpture and painting. Here's an example by Jacques Louis David of his buddy Napoleon and his horse.

One of my favorite "horse" paintings is by Rembrandt and is found in the Frick Collection.  Here we see The Polish Rider:

Every time I see this painting at the Frick, I'm convinced that the horse looks emaciated. However, the last time I went, the person with me disputed this and said the horse looked OK.  Actually the person said that Rembrandt just probably sucked at painting horses.  My interpretation of the piece, however, was that Rembrandt was being allegorical.  We see a look of dogged resolve on the head of the horse, despite the emaciated state of its body.  It's as if the inner strength or inner qualities of the horse, and not just its outer strength, is what makes the horse such a potent symbol.  The resolve or determination of the horse is contrasted with the calm sense of command and confidence of the rider.

Here's an interesting painting I once saw at a gallery called Asian Art Piers by Zheng Hongxiang:

It's difficult to see the details from this picture, but the red boxes are covered with text from very idealistic political documents and on two boxes are drawn the face of a human while on two boxes are drawn the images of a horse head. 

An artist represented by Clamp Art (on 25th street) paints amazing close-up images of horses.  Indeed, Jill Greenberg seems to be a quite versatile painter in that the themes of her paintings often change.  She has also painted some amazing pieces of women floating in swimming pools.  First the horses, though:

What's different about Greenberg's horses? These are horses at rest showing a type of mystical or transcendental quality.   As I mentioned earlier, the horse is not a means of transition and engagement just because of its brute size.

Greenberg also dazzled me with her images of women floating in swimming pools:

Of course the big question is: why do they have their shoes on?

I think the presence of the shoes magnifies the feeling of a type of "groundless ground."  I recall a lecture by a prominent sociologist at my undergraduate school on a famous sociologist who referred to our ethical beliefs and actions as being derived from the groundless ground of ethics.

In this pool of water the body is submerged and weightless - it is almost like the root system of a plant.  The head, like a lotus flower, pierces through above the surface of the water providing an asymmetrical equilibrium.

Here I am standing next to a giant painting of Secretariat which was once part of a show of Australian art at Agora gallery. The artist is Lyn Beaumont.

The Rural (Magical) Symbolism in Kathy Ruttenberg's Pieces (in Stux Gallery)

In The Golden Bough, James Frazer writes about what religion was like in pre-urban/non-urban societies. 

Indeed, Christianity was an almost perfect religion for the city, but an utterly useless religion for the countryside.  Christianity was a religion that offered a moral code and promoted values like toleration, forgiveness of strangers, justice and equality between social classes etc.  It's no coincidence that the first Christian missionaries headed out for the big cities (starting with Ephesus) and left the countryside alone.

And, of course, the biggest battle that the Catholic Church waged was against the religion of the countryside, which they termed "paganism."  A 'pagan' was literally a person who lived outside of a city.  It is no coincidence that "Satan," in the Middle Ages, began to be depicted to look a lot like the ancient Greek god Pan - an ancient rural deity. 

In the Middle Ages the church waged a war against 'witchcraft,' which was basically a magical, pagan practice that was often effectively used to aid in childbirth and fight disease through magical rituals involving quite potent herbal remedies.  One of the dirty secrets of the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance was that the women who used the  magical pagan herbs were hanged and burned by the church as witches and agents of Satan, but the herbs and practices were adopted by early (male) "doctors" as the backbone of the science of medicine.

Basically men stole witchcraft from women, fixed it up a bit, and called it science.

But, more specifically, what were the characteristics of this pre-urban type of religion?  As Frazier shows, a belief in magic was the centerpiece of this religion.  The rural 'pagans' were keen observers of nature and its yearly changes and believed that certain rituals could facilitate a beneficial relationship between their communities and the forces of nature.  The pagans were interested in a 'religion' that would be good at helping women give birth, ensuring rain, ensuring the fertility of their land, protecting their society from diseases, making their crops grow etc.  These were very worldly and community concerns.  In small villages there was no great need for an elaborate moral system, since everybody knew everyone else and individual socialization techniques worked to ensure a smoothly run society.

Here's an image of the Celtic nature god Cernunnos:

Common to this tradition are "green men" or sculptures of humans turning into trees or types of vegetation:

I think that if we look at Kathy Ruttenberg's work, we can see a lot of these pre-urban or pagan symbols. 

Here is a piece called "Gifts of This World"

Indeed, a lot of Ruttenberg's work involves people morphing into trees.

Frazier believed that trees were essential in pagan worship but I tend to disagree with his interpretation of what a tree meant.  Basically a tree grows its roots deep into the earth and its trunk and branches reach up into the sky.  To me the tree is a symbolic bridge between the earth and the sky, or between our animal nature and spiritual nature, or between the lower and the higher.

For a person, obviously, to morph into a sacred aspect of nature is very "pagan" and we see this metamorphosis all over the place in Celtic and other cultures.

Here's a piece I really liked from her last show at Stux:

A person's body has been deliberately severed in several places and a tree is growing through the disembodied corpse.  Of course, in the ancient world, human sacrifice was commonly practiced. This was, of course, severely condemned by Christian missionaries, but it seems (from evidence obtained from so-called 'bog-people') that the victims were often elite members of their society and went to their deaths willingly for the community. 

Of course, in the 'pagan' religions there was no belief in a heaven and hell.  Rural dwellers were too connected to the earth.  They saw bodies decompose, they saw the process of life generating life and for the most part believed in a type of reincarnation.

Basically it looks as if "pagan" religion was a religion dealing with the relationship between people and nature, whereas the Christian religion was a religion focusing on the relationship of people with people.

Here's a piece Ruttenberg called "Heat"

In Judeo-Christian mythology the snake is a type of thief - it steals immortality.  In pagan cultures the snake embraced immortality.  Here a person has morphed into a cat, an animal of the night, and like Cernunnos, it holds a snake as if it is holding a trophy.

Here's an image called Tree Hugger

So what is Ruttenberg saying by embracing a type of outlook that predates the rise of cities?

I think she's saying that our notion of inner or spiritual development is too limited because it is too Judeo-Christian.  It is too urban.  It neglects the earth and nature.  Often our concept of inner development is too tied to our relations to others and not tied deeply enough to what nature is or can be.  We are concerned with development within a society, but we should be concerned about our development within an environmental system.

I think the work of Ruttenberg invites us to examine how limited and how urban our beliefs are, and challenges us to recognize that our perspective has to embrace all of nature along with human society.  'Love your neighbor' should not just mean your human neighbor.

You can see more of Ruttenberg's work here: http://www.stuxgallery.com/www/artist_gallery/64/1406

Saints and Sex, The Granite Sculptues of Oh Chaehyun

I saw some very provocative pieces by Oh Chaehyun, a very well-established sculptor from South Korea, at Able Fine Art in Chelsea.

What was interesting to me was that he uses a very traditional Korean style of sculpture to create images of a religious nature juxtaposed next to images of a sexual nature.  Indeed, he chisels these pieces out of granite.  Sometimes the sexual images seem to be so 'crude' that they are almost shocking.

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For instance here we see a woman exposing her vagina while seated between two praying figures.

Here we see the same type of figure surrounded at the cardinal points by 4 Buddha heads.

So I was attracted to this artist's pieces because I felt it was quite thought-provoking to juxtapose images in such a provocative manner.

Is the woman inviting sexual intercourse? Is she about to deliver a child?

It took some time for me to find a meaning in these pieces.  I finally concluded that you cannot have the spiritual without the sexual.  The spiritual is literally born from the sexual.  Conversely, the spiritual gives meaning to the results of the sexual process. The spiritual and sexual form a type of cycle, perhaps. 

Also, there is religious literature in which sexual processes are used to correspond (symbolically/allegorically) to spiritual processes.  In some works of visual art it is even hard to tell whether the sexual or the spiritual is occurring.  Remember this work by Bernini? That's "St." Theresa.

One of my favorite writers from the past is the Japanese novelist Mishima.  In one of his autobiographical novels (Confessions of a Mask) he writes that, as an adolescent, when he saw (in a book) the painting of St. Sebastian being executed, he involuntarily experienced his first orgasm.  Did Guido Reni deliberately add a sexual element to the suffering and helplessness of Sebastian in this painting?  Or did Mishima just read something extra into this work?

Oh seemed to be implying that we cannot radically divorce the sexual from the spiritual. Indeed, in rural societies, before the rise of cities and religious traditions ideally suited for city-life (like Christianity) the spiritual was not separated from the sexual.

If one looks at ancient Celtic symbolism for instance, one sees this goddess:

I think that Buddhism, like Christianity, is a religion for the 'city.'  "Pagan" religions were a type of religion that focused on the relationship between people and nature, whereas Christianity and Buddhism seem to focus on the relationship between people and each other.  Pagan cultures accepted sex and even embraced sexual activity in some of their rituals (according to James Frazer).  When people get moved into cities and people become divorced from nature, then sex and spirituality become radically divorced.

This artist is therefore taking a religion that does not overtly deal with sex and he shows how initially out of place its images might seem juxtaposed with sexual images.  Again, he seems to imply that this should not be the case and that it is time for urban religions and spirituality to reconnect with their rural and ancient pagan pasts.