Emma Stern's 'Hell is Hot' Turns Internet Fetish Into High Art
On view at Almine Rech Paris through June 7.
New York-based artist Emma Stern unveiled her latest solo exhibition, Hell is Hot, at Almine Rech’s Paris outpost. Expanding her cast of latex-slick avatars, this new body of work offer a new lens for embodiment, desire and perversion, with an off-kilter brand of feminism, one of the Crash (1996) variety. Between all its adorable “bunny-eared” and “mermaid-tailed” monsters, Stern captures the collision of fantasy and flesh in all its dreamy, disarming intensity.
The artist’s process begins in 3D software, digitally sculpting bodies that are later translated into lush gradients and vaporous washes of paint. Her figures — part doll, part cyborg — stand as monuments to the hyper-sexualized imagery of the internet, while also reimagining it with a meticulous, almost devotional hand. Every shimmer, every curve, reflects a profound attention to the fantasy of form.
As Alex Quicho observes, “Stern’s idols give us the post-human we deserve” — creatures caught between battle and seduction, spectacle and self-awareness. In the contemporary theater of desire, identity fractures and reforms through an ecstatic melting between bodies, in place of bruising. “Skin-to-skin like cream on pavement. Like a snowball in hell. The enemies-to-lovers pipeline has never been so scorching.”
The exhibition is now on view through June 7 in Paris.
Almine Rech Turrenne
64 Rue de Turenne,
75003 Paris, France
