“Intimate” by Margit Denz
from 27 January to 27 August 2006

“Intimate” is an interactive exhibition somewhere between object, sculpture and installation. It is a unique project that is the result of thinking about the female human form, its eroticism and sensuality. Margit Denz, an internationally renowned Austrian artist, systematically uses porcelain, a material that she works with using moulds in order to be able to repeat the same object endlessly. She finds in mythology, a compendium of primitive and enigmatic symbols, the ideal names for the four areas of this exhibition. Each of these sections propose new ways of reading the world of serialised, kitsch objects, the aesthetics of fragility and the delicacy of sensuality.

I. Baubo
Baubo is the shameless goddess, an extreme expression of female sexuality represented in antiquity as the vulva personified. The objects displayed in this area are sculptures that allude to the female sexual organ. These large format vessels are containers that refer to ancestral fertility and recall the sensual pleasures of love, while at the same time reminding one of the pain caused by giving birth to a new being.

II. Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the goddess of carnal love, female beauty and sexual attraction. Because of all these qualities, she triggers the envy and jealousy of all the other goddesses on Olympus. The 300 rigorously lined up hearts of various colours and decorations displayed in this section allude to the games of seduction played by men and women, evoking female passions and recalling the discourses of pleasure and love.

III. Eros and Psyche
Aphrodite’s son, Eros, also known as Cupid, the god of love and a mythological figure who personifies, together with Princess Psyche, all the passionate states between man and woman. This section, dedicated to these two mythological figures, presents a series of intimate male and female items of clothing, conceived with great realism and packed with meaning and power, emphasising the endemic importance of human emotional relationships and their constant fragility.

V. Demeter
Demeter is the goddess of fertility. Under the name of this divine carrier of the fruit of the earth, this area contains works offering the most exquisite food in the form of the small erogenous zones of the human body. Plates, bowls, teapots and cups from a luxurious set of crockery offer viewers nipples and belly buttons, conceived with an always elegant and ironic simulation and alluding constantly to two of the physiological necessities of human beings: that of feeding oneself and eroticism.