Interview with Pet Silvia, Artist & Curator
Working as an artist & model for himself for over 30 years, Pet Silvia has adopted the attitude, “I just do this because it feels good.” He has been described as a performance artist who performs silently from within his studio, exploring gender issues in much of his work.
From posing in various states of undress, to the execution of the work in a wide range of media, the quest to be the pretty girl in the picture is the foundation of Silvia's art. Whether the framework is a hand-made diorama, a collage transfer painting, or a digital image, he creates a self-contained utopia where the exploration of art and sexuality are one and the same. There are no boundaries or separation.
Pet started out in the early 1970’s as an Avant Garde multi-media, Rock n' Roll performer working in cabaret venues and concerts. By the late 70’s, he was drawing underground cartoons as part of the Newave Movement, mostly being published out of Berkeley, California.
After having secured a position at the Newark Public Library as a Photo Archivist, he began a series of photographs of inanimate objects, surreal street photos, and the nude. Some of these were first exhibited at the City Without Walls Gallery in Newark between 1982 & 1985, and at the Newark Library as well. He left Newark in 1985, to paint full time for a while in the countryside of northwest New Jersey.
Several years later, while working as manager of a reprographics firm in Morristown, Silvia discovered, and fell in love with the xerographic process as an alternative photographic means. Through this process, in both color and black & white, images could be produced, reprocessed, manipulated, and utilized to make Art. His first Xerographic Paintings were exhibited at the Pleiades Gallery in New York City in 1988, with a subsequent solo exhibition there in 1990. While preparing for that show, some of the paintings were featured on MTV, along with an interview in his studio.
Though the model he used for ten years had occupied the bulk of his subject matter, it became clear that a new one was needed. After several others were tried, the timeless look that Silvia was striving for could not be captured as it was previously. Having nowhere else to turn, he began posing himself in front of the camera. It wasn't really a quest for self-portraiture, or ego satisfaction, but an experiment in duality, and then, pansexuality.
The first series of these radical new works were exhibited in 1993 in a show at the Ramapo College Art Gallery titled, Exploding The Figure. It has since become apparent to Silvia that his work with a pan-gendered model, who happens to be the Artist, using techniques on canvas with laser generated photographics and paint, and narrative themes of an often-time overt sexual nature, are not readily accepted by the art world. This accounts for the fact that Silvia’s work has gone unnoticed, except for shows in quirky corners, and publication in scene periodicals.
Silvia has done commissioned work for Sony Entertainment, has appeared on national TV, exhibited across the US and Europe, and still does an occasional performance piece. The Musee National d’Art Moderne in Paris, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the MoMA Library in New York City, all have Silvia’s work in their collections.
Silvia is still his own model. Having finished one of the last painting series Free TV Free, which goes through the personal story of how he arrived at, and continues on with his own sexuality, his current work deals with the feminine ideal as it relates to art, media and technology. One body of work is the Sex Object series. It incorporates photographs, found objects, mixed media, and cutouts of the artist/model as freestanding dimensional dolls. These reliefs on Plexiglas come full circle into the age-old question of what is Art, and what is pornography.
Currently Pet has gone digital, using the computer to print his images on a variety of media, including canvas, backlit film on Plexiglas, Digital “C” Prints, and Giclée prints on paper, using the medium as an extension of photography, as well as all the imagery on his website.
Pet is co-owner of the gallery, Art at Large in New York, has been both artist and curator with exhibitions that celebrate the human body and sexuality, for over 25 years. Starting out in the 1980’s with several co-op galleries, and art events that he produced, he came into the forefront of the underground. Between 1996 and 1999, Pet did his weekly cable TV show in Manhattan, The Malignant Muse. Costumed in drag, wearing lingerie, he promoted the work of unknown artists, and poked fun at the art world establishment because, “they deserve it.”
With his wife, Tammey Stubbs, they opened Art at Large in January of 2002 in Hell's Kitchen on Ninth Avenue, to promote and sell the work of artists they feel are a significant contribution to life and longing in the 21st century. Represented artists include: H.R. Giger, Annie Sprinkle, Barbara Nitke, Carolyn Weltman, Frances Turner, Charles Gatewood, Spider Webb, Tom of Finland, and photographs from the Quentin Crisp Archives.
More of his work:
Q: What is the most important aspect of your art, and what's the most important aspect of your curating?
As an artist, I try to maintain an original and thought-provoking process. Art, after all, is mostly about process for the artist, and it certainly holds true for a curator. As a curator, I look for those same qualities in the works of others. I always tell new talent that I find to, “show me something I've never seen before”. It's still surprising that I always find that, either with what I've come up with as an artist, or in the works of others as curator.
Q: How much of curating is about shaping tastes and how much is about responding to them?
Curating is more about the former than the later. You take a given amount of talent and make things go together visually in some kind of coherent fashion, or thematic assembly. The responses come from the audience viewing what you have amassed to present to them. They then form opinions, likes, dislikes, etc. based on the notion that they are paying attention to what you are telling them with your collection of works. Hopefully, they “get it”, and that's my reward.
Q: Does being a working artist conflict with being a curator in any way? Do you find that you have to “switch hats,” or are you always both at the same time?
If anything is true, it's that both compliment each other. My brain is in a constant state of reckoning to find the purest points of movement in what I know works visually, what I think may work visually, and what the audience finds in agreement with me. Being both at the same time, just about all of the time, keeps me on my toes, and quick to respond to the needs of the project and the process. Plus, I rarely wear hats anyway.
Q: The mainstream tends to conflate nudity, sexuality, and (im)morality. What are your thoughts about that?
That's why it's called the “mainstream”. Whatever the art form, or creative discipline, we have to search out our audience. If you work within the stifled parameters of mainstream, for whatever reason that is, then you will probably meet with success more easily. But as soon as you enter into the realms of sexuality, or religion, or politics, that is where you will be constantly met with strong opinions about what you do, and often a rather oblique opposition. The only thing you can do to keep from going insane is to come to grips with this fact early on, and stay true to you guns. But realize, that it is a double edged sword, because few can ever attain the degree of recognition and success that they would hope for.
Q: The phrase “Art That Excites” is at least a double-entendre. One reading of it is an allusion to arousal, which some would say is the primary function of pornography. Do you think it's necessary to distinguish erotic fine art from pornography, and why?
I use that tag-line for Art At Large, for several reasons. First, because the word “erotic” is a misleading word for the general public. They immediately associate the word “pornography” with it. As a business person, I'm always trying to find new markets for these works of art, that I think deserve better attention.
So, yes, from a business point of view, it's vital that the mind of the collector who is new to this genre, be educated to the subtle nuances of the erotic. The only really distinguishable differences between erotic & pornographic is the venue, and the vehicle. Erotic is one or several pictures in an art gallery or art website. Porn is hundreds or thousand upon thousands of pictures in a magazine or website that you pay to look at. I've done both, and porn has a more immediate monetary reward. Erotic art, as with any controversial genre, takes time for acceptance.
Q: Can you discuss the difference between pan-sexuality and androgyny?
I would think that pan-sexuality is more about variety, and lots of choices to experiment with. Androgyny is more like being one gender, but looking like the opposite.
Q: Who or what has most influenced your visual style?
I've admired and studied a lot of art over the years. There has never been any single person, or thing that has been more on my “A” list than another. I do think that Tom of Finland, perhaps more than any other artist, has been more of an inspiration to erotic artists than anybody else. From his notoriety, influence on gay culture, and recently being accepted into the permanent collection of MoMA in New York, is a pretty big deal. The first time I learned of his work, and the foundation he helped start before his death, was a tremendous source of comfort for me as an artist. When I first found out about his work and the foundation, I couldn't believe they existed. A very crucial artist and organization for erotic artists of all orientations.
Q: Has making your work taught you anything about yourself? About others?
Yes. It's a tough way to make a living with. Any art that is not within the mainstream of the art world is truly a labor of love. All of the artists I've met over the years have the same thing in common. They all really love what they do, and I've tried to help them to understand that it is most important for them to keep doing it, despite all of the pitfalls they'll come across.
Q: Pierre Molinier's work also looked at gender identity and longing in interesting ways. Are you familiar with his work, and do you see any connections with your own?
I love his work! I discovered Molinier's work a good five years or so after I began my self-erotic portrayals. I saw several exhibitions of his photographs, but I found him to be much darker than me in his execution. Also, much freer in his works that are kaleidoscopic in nature. But people have told me I have sexier legs than he did.
Q: What's the best advice or feedback you've ever received regarding your work?
“Get your stuff out of here and don't come back”, has been my favorite.
Rejection makes you hard, and if you are ever to be successful in anything, you need to get over your fears and forge ahead.