GROUP EXHIBITION

Pleasure holds hands with disgust.

Unnamed urgencies emerge in short fuzes that become hard to dodge.

Heat rises from the follicles of the body into waves of lucid conflict.

Skin murmurs, fur erects, organs simmer, teeth empty then genitals dazzle.

The brain forgets itself.

In this state, thinking has a holiday reverting itself to the animal. An orgasm is ecstasy and probably the best thing in theworld because orgasms are never moral, they arrive in their own world within the human, indifferent to social rules. Fortoo long this sublime chaos has predominantly been told to us by one type of human. Their story is often one of failurefor the recipient in its inability to share bliss and its success in selfish satisfactions. This heat does not belong to just onetype of person. It exists in everyone.

A hardcore rejects niceties because to be hardcore is to never fall into the safe and simple parameters of right or wrong.Today this seems to be an unnecessarily rare, even brave position to take. Sexuality is a limitless arena yet those whohave told these stories away from mainstream pleasures have historically been belittled for examining desire andpleasure. Often these makers are considered vain, immature, frivolous, decadent, or perverse. They are told that theycannot be trusted with the weight of this subject. They will likewise be condemned as being solicitous and those whohold this judgement would never think of themselves as square.

This exhibition has no straight lines and sex is never identical, it is always unique. To make work from the position of asubjective sexuality is not easy. It takes a hardcore to swerve the inevitable variations of sensation that others chooseto project upon these artists. Choosing to create from this place could be considered a vulnerable decision butvulnerability is, after all, the ultimate power. Historically, mainstream renditions of vulnerability have been praised whenalready in the hands of the status quo, this has led for vulnerability to only look one way and this is quite pathetic.Vulnerability is a rainbow.

Not all of the works in Hardcore are necessarily pornographic in its most robust understanding of the word. Instead, theworks tow a line where the intention is to occupy the infinite contradictions that sex inhabits because sex has anundeniable urgency, and this urgency is never a frail thing. Sex exhilarates us. Consequently, the policing of who isallowed to possess sex will be endless. This is the power play of who can feel the most alive. The socially non-dominant perspective understands that they can be reduced to a piece of meat and that degradation is always abstract.There is no one singular sexual morality although we are all led to believe that there is.

Shame is not an easy thing to discard but the works in this exhibition thoroughly consider this. The artistsin Hardcore work from this way of living. A calibration of taking an autonomous stance for non-narrative pleasure and anemancipation from prudency and self-righteousness. Sexuality and violence co-exist along a knife edge of the humancondition. The works in the exhibition reclaim the convention of who is supposed to be passive and indulge in therejection of sentimental and conformist gratifications. The thought that sexual content usually first takes up is that ofrevolt and these artists stand openly to revulsion. More importantly, this show stands for pleasure as something to takeseriously.

Calling these artists powerful would be a frugal statement.

The topics in this exhibition cannot escape provocation. To be inside the body rather than the mind is to refuse thebanality of sophistication and instead embrace the unpredictability of viscerality. These works are not seducingyou, because they are not about you. We each have the right to decide what is truly upsetting or alluring or grotesque orfantastic. Sensationalism is, unbelievably to some, actually subjective and this is something to protect.

Sometimes I wonder what an orgasm looks like.The brain forgets itself.

Press release courtesy Sadie Coles HQ. Text: Reba Maybury.