Sexual scenes on classic stained glass windows, ceramic phalluses and painted Danish Lego erotica. Galerie MooiMan sets erotic play and seduction as art forms at the centre of the light-hearted exhibition Play with Me. Usually MooiMan focuses on men (hence the name), but this exhibition is completely inclusive: straight, gay, male, female and everyone in between can play with Italian glass artist Diego Tolomelli's glass deck. Kunstpot was curious and went to the opening for a visual report.
Somewhat timidly I step into MooiMan gallery. I am clearly not the average visitor to the gallery. Although I am an hour late to the opening, the room is nicely filled with white men over forty. Upon entering, I immediately receive a friendly welcome from one of the owners of MooiMan gallery, so my hesitation quickly subsides.
‘We’re cheating,’ I hear in an apologetic tone, ‘at this exhibition women are also featured, because the theme is “inclusivity in erotica”. We don't normally do that, in fact we focus exclusively on male art.’
EXCITING WINDOWS
Italian artist Diego Tolomelli has also come over from Italy for the opening. When he comes walking up, I catch myself in my preconception that he would be kinkier-looking person than the shy, friendly man who talks about his work in a soft voice.
For years he had wanted to create sexually tinted stained glass windows, but because it is very labour-intensive and costly work that would take at least three years; he was not able to start until 2015. The work consists of multiple layers of glass and paint techniques, and the drying times between layers are long. The thin glass is blown by mouth in Germany and carefully coloured, fired, painted and cut by Tolomelli himself. Together, the works are the size of a church window. The colours are bright and Tolomelli gives every detail full attention: if you want, you can count the pubic hairs. As far as I am concerned, his craftsmanship would not be out of place in the Vatican.
EVERYONE PLAYS ALONG
Tolomelli tells me that, in Italy and France, the card culture is very strong, more so than here in the Netherlands. ‘Because all of us play card games, I chose that as the basis to make different forms of sex visible, because everyone plays that game too.’
For each colour, he chose a theme. His favourite series is that of clubs, on which he depicts ethnic diversity. He also thinks the woman of spades turned out well: ‘She is not a standard beauty, yet she is not ashamed of her body and pleasure and shows it openly.’
LUST IN LEGOLAND
As I have another glass of wine and a homemade snack pushed into my hand, I check out the works of Danish painter SvendA. He shows sexuality as a joyful, harmless form of expression: a game as mundane as Lego and as imaginative as comic books.
CERAMIC PHALLUSES
For his Flying objects d' art, Tilburg-based artist Antoine Timmermans had his friends make casts of their members, using rubber make-your-own-dildo moulds.
Timmermans picked up the idea of using the male genitalia as an art object from the Romans, who put metres-high phalluses next to their homes as a status symbol.
There was nothing prudish about those Romans, and LGBT preferences reportedly didn't bother them too much back then either.
Playing with sex is universal. Talking about it with people who "do it differently" isn’t always that way yet.
‘People end up in the hospital emergency room with all kinds of objects stuck in their colon,’ says a regular visitor to MooiMan who is a doctor, as we stare at the shiny genitals. ‘I haven’t encountered these things yet.’
Text and image: Marike Masker
Play with me can be seen in Galerie MooiMan until 27 January 2019.