ashkan sahihi

Nov 23, 2003
http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,275375,00.html

Sex as Sex Substitute
Exhibition "Cum Shots"
By Hendryk M. Broder

How do you denounce the increasing pornofication of everyday culture without producing pornography? A New York artist, in his exhibition "Cum Shots," shows photographs that confront the spectator with the question: Is it yoghurt, is it mayonnaise, or could it be something different altogether?They are only nine photographs, each 30 by 40 inches, portraits of four men and five women. One has to look very closely to recognize what matters most in these photos: little white splotches on the face and the portrayed expressions which are surprised, embarrassed or innocent.

"Cum Shots" is the name of the small exhibition at the Axel Raben Gallery in Chelsea and it shows what normally is the outcome and the climax of the interaction in any porn movie - Cum Shots. Although without the usual preliminary action.

"It is a commentary and not a repetition," says photographer Ashkan Sahihi who deliberated for a long time on how best to point out the "pornofication of the everyday culture" without producing pornography himself. Sahihi who was born in Teheran in 1963, grew up in Frankfurt, Germany, and has lived in New York since 1988, wanted to "top what is shown daily on MTV," girls who grind their rear onto the screen like Kylie Minogue and round their lips like Britney Spears, boys who grab their crotch like Michael Jackson. "They show everything but the Grand Finale."

So, almost automatically, Sahihi came up with the idea of "Cum Shots". The rest was persuasion. "I talked until I was blue in the face." For days on end he spoke on the phone with "neighbors, friends, acquaintances, and the acquaintances of acquaintances." He sent emails and faxes. At the end he had 12 candidates between the ages of 27 and 53. Six men and six women who were prepared to go to the end. Three of them dropped out, one of them was an agile autoerotist who wanted to satisfy himself, but only in front of an audience;" that was too much even for Ashkan Sahihi.

The photographs were taken in a back room of the gallery, where the candidates retreated with their partners. "After that I had exactly two minutes, after which the shots were not useable." Nonetheless, the most asked question by the gallery visitors is: "Is it real?" Theoretically it could be yoghurt or mayonnaise that is stuck to the faces. Whereupon Sahihi answers: "It's real, it's fresh, and it's home made!" In addition it is completely legal, "we don't show any genitalia and no intercourse."

Visitors to the gallery react as all people do when confronted with reality. "Some find it disgusting, others try to be relaxed, and some get it intuitively: Sex as sex substitute, as it is employed wherever there is something to sell, in music, fashion, advertising." Sahihi is no moralist. He is just one who looks on carefully. "People who can't get enough of tits and asses tune out when it gets to the point. I start where MTV stops."

The gallerist was astonished as well when he saw the photos. He found them "touching." Hubertus Axel Raben, born in Hamburg, Germany in 1951 is a graduate of the "Boston Graduate School for Psychoanalysis" and is a practicing analyst. In his gallery he prefers to show abstract and conceptual art; the "Cum Shots" are his concession to realism. Now Raben and Sahihi, the two German Americans in New York, plan their next project. Nine exhibitionists, women and men, will exhibit themselves live at the gallery for three evenings. The show will be called "The Exhibit" and will be even more explicit than the "Cum shots."