Andy Graffiti Commentary

The Drawers - Andy Graffiti Commentary written by Julie Oakes

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An Exotic Erotic Christmas, Dec 9 - Jan 11, 2007

Romantics kiss first. They kiss for a length of time, a physical connection that alludes to the sex act, tongue exploring mouth, fleshy lips on fleshy lips. In seven drawings of an unassuming size, Andy Graffiti has gone straight to the sex where his hands have caressed the genitals leaving sensual wanderings in messy tracks upon a once pure white page. His wanderings have a bisexual nature as penises are touched as well as vaginas, sizeable stems stroked to a dark greasiness while cherries nestle in hair, rouge red like the age-old simile for the hymen or as if cursed by the stain of menstruation. These are erotic drawings. They depict the root of the matter.

This visible lustiness is not devoid of feeling. It is a hot rendition of intimacy. Rubbed by the warm palm to a waxen shimmer, the dark panels are the literal semblances of intimacy at night, under the sheets, when darkness furthers the mysterious attractions of sexuality. They are whisper drawings, telling small secrets and not divulging identity other than sex, male or female. They are a suite of private moments where no names or histories get in the way of the pleasures. They are drawings of a mature sexuality, an experienced lover who has abandoned the ego in the pursuit of knowing the other. Like the sequestered rawness of “Last Tango in Paris” this is about sex, not futures, co-habitation or relationship. Andy Graffiti's drawings have the capacity to arouse.

Reading The Pillow Book provokes a like happenstance, where eventually not only the artist/writer but the viewer/reader is affected by the castles of fleshy imaginings and lured into a passionate place where juices well up and cups overflow. More evocative and less pornographic than the drawings, the seduction of the poetry is in the perfect turns, the combinations of words that become irresistible phrases that inspire an aesthetic exclamation that in turn leads to the erotic.