Porno>to>art
by David K. (published in www.nightcharm.com, april 2001)

A few years ago, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart memorably commented that although he could not define hardcore porn, "I know it when I see it." Godamnit! (Expletive added by your reviewer.)

So, I wonder how the judge would feel after browsing the necromantic rearrangements of artist Daniel J. Skråmestø and his beguiling website Porno-to-Art. A Net gallery that transforms your garden variety queer beefcake (as well as the occasional hardcore fucking or sucking) pics into -- well: A-R-T. (Or as my friends in Boston call it: "ahht").

Why do we demarcate porn from art? And who in the hell does the demarcating? Is porn strictly a medium for masturbation? While art remains -- what? High culture, academic and everything that excludes in-your-face sexual imagery? Questions, questions, questions! Where's Jesse Helms when you need him? I'm partial to the take-no-prisoners approach of sociologist and historian Camille Paglia. In her masterwork Sexual Personae she argues the case for reuniting porn and art; or rather, she shows us why the two have never been a dichotomy.

She writes: "Pornography is pure pagan imagism. Just as a poem is ritually limited verbal expression, so is pornography ritually limited visual expression of the daemonism of sex and nature. Every shot, every angle in pornography, no matter how silly, twisted or pasty, is yet another attempt to get the whole picture of the enormity of chthonian nature. Is pornography art? Yes. Art is contemplation and conceptualization, the ritual exhibitionism of primal mysteries."

Wow! That's quite a salvo. To simplify what she's talking about, let's just say that sex is a big unnerving mystery and porn/art -- with its pictures and written metaphors -- allows us to sit back and observe, via the safety of our intellect, what normally compels us too strongly and overwhelms us. I like how Paglia utters "sex" and "nature" within one breath -- to me the two are inextricably intertwined. We see this demonstrated every time the earth quakes (or a guy pops a boner). Both events are beyond anyone's control.

I'm impacted by Daniel Skråmestø's metamorphic shapes and fleshy textures because he creates a (seemingly) safe portal for us to peer into the center of our sexuality (which is what each of us does, every time we scan a porn pic -- just as Paglia describes it: the intention to see more, and to see deeper). I say seemingly safe because Barradas's pictures -- with all of their creamy liquidness -- are also showing us (men in particular) our inextricable connection -- via our bodies -- to the feminine (for which we have our mothers to thank).

This insight might have a dual effect (always a disturbing occurrence, because it challenges our habit of coding or labeling) for many gay men -- simply because the clearly demarcated (and exaggerated) world of the masculine in 99% of the photographs that most homosexual men respond and masturbate to -- isn't so clearly defined within Barradas's work. Knowingly or not, he offers us an alternative, paradoxical view of our sexuality -- and to me this is a requisite of really good art. If it beguiles, challenges and surprises me, well, I'm moved and indebted to the artist. A link or connection has been made -- a transmission received.

I'd venture to say that Skråmestø's undulating, Dionysian images transmit from a kind of middleground, a place that brings the best of both worlds together, but frames the nexus within a homosexual sensibility.

If porn is a kind visual/intellectual prelude to sex, Skråmestø's Photoshop retoolings go one step further and mimic and evoke the magical, corporeal and spiritual ground of the sex act itself. Who hasn't experienced, while receiving an expert blow job, that otherworldly sensation that his dick is four feet long, on fire and shooting a jizz load straight into the heart of the universe? You say you're having a hard time conjuring such a memory? Well, not to worry, Skråmestø, no doubt, has an image just for you within his oeuvre.

He'll take you there.

--David K