HUNTER MFA THESIS EXHIBITION

Fall 2008 Thesis Candidates

SAMANTHA BARD
ROBERT DEBBANE
PETER DEMOS
ANGELA DITTMAR
LARA DUREN
NICKY ENRIGHT
EVAN GRUZIS
CARLY HAFFNER
RACHEL KOHN
ARTEMIS LOUIS
YAO ZU LU
EMMY MIKELSON
CHAD MITCHNER
SHAWN POWELL
BIRGIT RATHSMANN
RYAN ROA
INGRID ROE
EMMA SPERTUS
JEREMY WAGNER
JEREMY WILLIS

Ingrid Roe

Ubiquitous advertisements for drugs like Viagra and Levitra make sexual dysfunction seem about as titillating a condition as heartburn or a headache. This climate—arguably perverse or progressive—in which ostensibly private predicaments are addressed in public, sets the scene for photographer Ingrid Roe’s two-tiered project “Tomorrow Never Comes.”

Roe has collected an international cornucopia of non-prescription treatments—pills, capsules, ointments, sprays, and the like—all of which purport to treat real or imagined sexual problems. Roe then separates each from its packaging and focuses her camera on its raw, tactile qualities. The resulting large-format color C-prints celebrate and decontextualize, among other things, a translucent cream oozing suggestively out of a tube, a row of suppositories that resemble sugar-dusted candies, and a broken capsule that spills out into a pile of earthy granules.

“Tomorrow Never Comes,” however, is not simply an exercise in beautification; it is an exploration of how societal and cultural conceptions of sexual perfection are turned in to commercial commodities. Roe’s photos are accompanied by reproductions of the sex aids’ packaging, blown up and presented on large, fluorescent-lit Lucite cases. The larger-than-life displays exaggerate the suggestive commercial come-ons, like that for Dr James’ Big Boy Spray, and they stand in stark contrast to Roe’s elegantly erotic product shots. Seen together, the photographs and packaging blow-ups suggest a mythic quality about the products and their outrageous promises.

Mara Hoberman