Neo-Erotic Juried Show 2003

Grady T. Turner, is an art critic and curator based in New York. His writing is regularly featured in publications including Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art, New York Times and Bomb,
where he is a contributing editor. The former director of exhibitions at the New York Historical Society, he was curator of the inaugural exhibition of the Museum of Sex, "NYC Sex: How New York City Transformed Sex in America," and he is author of the book of the same name.

"This is a dichotomous moment for artists interested in sex and sexuality," says Mr. Turner. "On the one hand, commercial galleries and art magazines are filled with art addressing intimacy, love, and the body, some of it rather explicit. On the other, the category of 'erotic art' is regarded as something of an art world ghetto, cut apart from the mainstream and thus largely denied acccess to its infrastructure of galleries, magazines, art fairs and so on.

"In jurying this show, I was impressed by the quality and diversity of art submitted by artists who would classify their work as erotic. In the very painful process of making final selections from over 300 submissions, I decided to select a group that reflected the variety of those submissions. So it is that the final result is a mix of media and sexual styles, but also of fine artists and commercial artists, professionals and amateurs, teachers and students.

Viewers will hopefully forgive the curator's bias in favor of diversity, and appreciate that behind each image on view are dozens more by each artist, and dozens more by dozens more artists. Erotic art is now an extraordinarily rich field. Art @ Large is to be commended for providing a much needed gallery space for this movement."