maria jean / sex / september 5 - 27, 2024
“My interest in sex has long preceded my ability to comprehend even its most elemental meaning. Aiding in the development of this interest throughout childhood and adolescence was a restrictive upbringing in what is incontrovertibly among the most perverted of religious traditions, Roman Catholicism, which has not only played a role of gargantuan proportions in shaping my ever-evolving relationship with sex but has also engendered morally conflicting influences on the formation of my identity as a creative sensualist.
Despite unremitting parental and institutional efforts to prevent exposure to any degree or manner of supposed immorality, I began to develop a strong fascination with eroticism at an early age, a secret that I would keep for many years. As I reached sufficient maturity to engage in conscious consumption of popular media and the arts, I found myself intrigued by depictions of sensuality, nudity, and sexual expression, both natural and simulated - things in which I saw beauty but had been taught to condemn.
Nearly two decades would elapse before I would come to acknowledge and accept the intensity of my sexual nature and the different ways in which it desired to be explored. sex is an exploration of carnal delight in the contexts of specific personally significant and enlightening experiences realized through visual amalgamations of design, technology, soft eroticism, reinterpreted iconographic motifs, and abstract innuendo. The use of subtlety and ambiguity serves as an allusion to memories of early encounters with titillation, a concept that I would not possess the capacity to grasp until much later, while sly details invite a closer look and more intimate appreciation of their naughtiness. What you believe you see may be, if you so choose.”
www.maria-jean.com / @mariajean.mp3

Anatomical Portrait I, 2020 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 30.09” x 27"

Anatomical Portrait II, 2022 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 27" x 27"

sex : The Album, 2023 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 43.31” x 40.4”

Diptych / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / original digital photograph (left) by Lucian Schmit / 39.37” x 49.21”

Mario, 2024 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 20" x 20"

Magenta, 2020 / digital media on hot press paper / 52.1" x 33.33"

Do you want to enter me?, 2024 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 40" x 33.33" / original photograph by Lucian Schmit

Pink, 2020 / digital media on hot press paper / 52.1" x 33.33"

Skintight Skyline, 2024 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 27" x 27" / original film photograph by Lucian Schmit

Seeing God, 2024 / digital media on hot press paper / 35" x 35"

sex, 2023 / photographic + digital media on hot press paper / 31” x 30.73”