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"I'm a nice boy who enjoys being a naughty girl in front of a camera."
BIO
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."
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 work. 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.
He 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, he 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 no where 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.
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, contained in his numerous appearances in the I.S.C.A. Quarterly, which they subscribe to et al. 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.
Recent exhibitions include, Can't Pet This - Art @ Large, Museum of Queer Visual Culture, CUNY Graduate Center/Leslie-Lohman Foundation, both in New York City, Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Consolidated Works, Seattle WA. Anything For Love ‘95 in Columbus, Ohio, featured a solo exhibition of works from his mythology series, along with the show Fashion of the Gods, which Silvia wrote, directed, and portrayed Cupid. He was co-organizer and Creative Director of this event, which was billed as the First Annual Convention of Eroticism, and donated some of the proceeds to the Kaleidoscope Youth Coalition in Columbus, a halfway house for teens abandoned by their parents because of their sexual orientation.
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 free-standing 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.
Silvia did a weekly cable TV show, the Malignant Muse, on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network for three years. It focused on unknown guest artists, while poking fun at those who are known. He also worked as curator for the Sacred Body Art Gallery on Canal Street in New York City, promoting the Extreme Artwork of underground New York.
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 – literally! From the basement of the Sacred Body Arts Tattoo Emporium on Canal Street, he branched out into other underground galleries, venues and clubs throughout the 1990’s. 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.
Silvia was instrumental, through his association with the Tom of Finland Foundation, in starting the annual New York Erotic Art Fair Weekend, held every May at The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender Community Center, since 2001. In April 2005, Pet was invited to be the Guest Curator for the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, bringing in over 30 artists, and helping to make that event it's biggest success in art sales to date. He has done the same for Seattle in 2006, and 2007.
Having expanded the gallery’s vision to accommodate the various genres that have cropped up in recent years, Silvia has also begun his new lecture series based on his forthcoming book, The Artists Life. That, in tandem with his private portfolio critiques as an artist consultant. Having worked on both sides of the coin with over 250 exhibitions as either an artist or as a curator, all of his involvement's have helped make him a trailblazing advocate for what he calls, "Art That Excites!" He does this with an equal understanding and passion for those who make the art, and those who hang it on their walls.
Pet Silvia lives and works in Manhattan, and for a man in his fifties, still has the greatest pair of legs on the planet.
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