For All Intensive Purposes

Author:

Heimark, Paige Alexandra

Area of Honors:

Art

Degree:

Bachelor of Fine Arts

Document Type:

Thesis

Thesis Supervisors:

Ghislaine Fremaux, Thesis Supervisor
Simone Osthoff, Thesis Honors Advisor

Keywords:

Freud
sex
art
drawing
painting
sculpture
video
Waters
Zizek
party
id
ego
fantasy

Abstract:

My work explores sex as the ultimate tool for both self-discovery and self-destruction. Sexual desire drives human action and evolution. Libido is present from birth, not puberty, and persists until death. Able to swell and deflate in the blink of an eye, libido guides our actions and reacts to our surroundings. Libido not only guides, but also soothes. It opens up interior spaces where nonsense and pleasure flourish, if only momentarily. We age, external demands increase, desires conflict, and libido comes to occupy the increasingly dissonant spaces within our minds. My work illustrates and superimposes that absurd contradiction atop seemingly mundane sexual situations. These snapshots of absurdity utilize nonsensical humor and a youthful aesthetic to resonate with the viewer's own experience of being pulled simultaneously in many directions. Specifically, my work explores mundane sexual encounters as moments in adult life where the ridiculous and visceral enables us to both merge and split different facets of identity. A body of drawings, photographs, video, and sculpture filled the Patterson Gallery for one week in a show called For All Intensive Purposes.