Lydia Maria Pfeffer Examines the Mythologies That Populate the Subconscious in Love Magic @ Galerie Droste in Paris

Heavenly Visit, 2022
Oil on canvas
82 x 78 in
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Droste

Re-Entering the Waters of Love, 2022
Oil on canvas
36 x 28 in
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Droste

Sweet Love, 2023
Oil on canvas
72 x 80 in
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Droste

text by Barbara Norton

Love is magic and magic is love in Lydia Maria Pfeffer’s newest exhibit at Galerie Droste. Pfeffer gleefully dances across the teeming, queer forest floor in Love Magic, on view through August 12 in Paris. Unabashedly beastly, Pfeffer’s creatures have uncovered the secret to that jeweled, wisteria world of queer perfection. And they aren’t reluctant to let the rest of us know—serene, self-satisfied smiles grace the face of nearly every face (human or not). In this world, the joy is so open that it is difficult to look away.

These creatures’ utter comfort with both themselves and each other is especially magical in Heavenly Visit, as a leopard with a near-human visage nuzzles against a beaked woman’s lap. With its eyes closed and mouth open in bliss, one can’t help but feel almost jealous of that leopard and its pink-tinted nirvana. 

A visual gorging, lilacs, apples, and moons pirouette around amongst feathered, furred, and finned revelry. Pfeffer’s use of color only furthers her fantastic agenda of complete release—pale blues wrap amorously around golds and ruby reds. The rainbow of greens in Dream in Green is especially erotic in its lushness. Starburst-like white flowers—woven into the mane of the center wolf woman—bloom from soft brushstrokes that glow with vitality.

Meanwhile in Sweet Love, a fox wraps an arm around the waist of a heavenly messenger, as lily of the valley blooms and a swan looks on. Joy shines in these small details, suggesting that these scenes exist in an entirely formed world, perhaps only a few galaxies away from our own. In Pfeffer’s twilight boudoir, erotic, unhinged queer love is the shimmering core—true love magic. 

Love Magic is on view through 12 August at Galerie Droste Rue des Archives 72.

2 of Hearts, 2022
Oil on canvas
82 x 78 in
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Droste

Dream in Green, 2021
Oil on canvas
84 x 78
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Droste

Easy Lovin, 2022
Oil on canvas
72 x 60 in
Image courtesy of the artist and Galerie Droste

Marilyn Minter Presents "My Cuntry 'Tis of Thee" @ Simon Lee Gallery London

Marilyn Minter, My Cuntry ’Tis of Thee, 2018. HD Digital Video. Duration 9:46. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong and Salon 94, New York.

Marilyn Minter, My Cuntry ’Tis of Thee, 2018. HD Digital Video. Duration 9:46. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong and Salon 94, New York.

Marilyn Minter, My Cuntry ’Tis of Thee, 2018. HD Digital Video. Duration 9:46. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong and Salon 94, New York.

Marilyn Minter, My Cuntry ’Tis of Thee, 2018. HD Digital Video. Duration 9:46. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong and Salon 94, New York.

Marilyn Minter, My Cuntry ’Tis of Thee, 2018. HD Digital Video. Duration 9:46. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong and Salon 94, New York.

Marilyn Minter, My Cuntry ’Tis of Thee, 2018. HD Digital Video. Duration 9:46. Courtesy of the artist, Simon Lee Gallery, London / Hong Kong and Salon 94, New York.

In Marilyn Minter’s video work, “My Cuntry 'Tis of Thee” (2018), women write the word ‘cunt’ into condensation on a glass pane. As the women articulate each letter, their features are gradually revealed as the steam hiding them dissipates. Minter reclaims one of the most widely acknowledged offensive words by providing the women in her video the chance to, quite literally, write it away from its degrading associations. The artist’s debut exhibition with Simon Lee Gallery and her first solo presentation in the UK in thirty years explores feminism and sexual politics through images that dismantle Western culture’s hierarchies of censorship and misogyny. “My Cuntry 'Tis of Thee” is on view through July 13 at Simon Lee Gallery 12 Berkeley St, Mayfair, London. photographs courtesy of the artist and Simon Lee Gallery London.

'Pussy, King of the Pirates' Group Show Opens @ Maccarone Gallery

Pussy, King of the Pirates unifies 20 non-male artists who engage in and question the physical and conceptual use of the body in form, medium, and identity politics. The works represent a contemporary reclamation of the female figure, the depiction of which has historically been from the heteronormative male perspective. While the latter has both defined and composed the canon of figuration and formalism heretofore, their compositions of female figures are now more vulnerable to criticisms of objectification. Those who do not self-identify with that status quo – whether female, non-binary, queer, or transgender – may be released from a stigmatic history of a specific oppression. The question remains whether or not they are absolved from the act of objectifying, should that be the ultimate desire at all. Pussy, King of the Pirates is on view through September 8th at Maccarone Gallery, 300 South Mission Road, Los Angeles. photographs by Oliver Kupper

PHAT_THIGHZ Record Release Party At Collective Skate In Los Angeles

photographs by Alex the Brown