Ernesto Pujol at Priska C. Juschka - New York

Wrapped salon-style around two adjacent walls, Ernesto Pujol's photographic installation "The Bathers" (2002) featured 21 large and small C-prints of nude or partially draped men, all in the same spare, immaculate bathroom. At first, you surmise that these are shots of the same person, but in fact the artist has interspersed photos of different men at different stages of life (one in his 20s, one in his 30s, another in his 40s) as they perform daily ablutions.

Pujol never discloses faces and instead concentrates on partial glimpses: the slope of a shoulder, an abdomen with a white towel loosely strung across the hips, part of a back reflected in the mirror, the rear of a head. The effect is vaguely clinical, dispassionate, like academic anatomical studies, but also enigmatic and voyeuristic. Pujol offers a refreshing reappraisal of what constitutes masculinity and male beauty today, through decidedly nonmacho poses that tend toward delicacy and repose. Meanwhile, he effectively mixes a broad array of references. A gracefully curving torso or a chest with the left hand held to the breast suggests classical sculpture. Stomachs leading to genitals that are covered with a towel or underwear seem like details from familiar images of Christian saints or Jesus, while the whole conceit of bathers about to enter or emerging from the water recalls paintings (largely of women) by Gustave Courbet and Paul Gauguin, among others--a tradition which Pujol both infiltrates and subverts. Bringing everything up to date are suggestions of film stills and coolly fetishistic fashion photography, notably various Calvin Klein campaigns.

It's impressive how Pujol's close, even obsessive attention to the truncated male form becomes so evocative. Slight physical differences among the bathers, like the relative thickness of the waist, manifest aging, the progression of time and implicit hints of mortality. Eroticism is present throughout, yet subdued. Moreover, the mundane activity of showering in an undistinguished white bathroom (it could be in an apartment, a hospital or a hotel) shades into ritualistic acts of cleansing, purification and release. The photographs are sensual and sexual, but also suggestive of solitude, meditative concentration and perhaps even spiritual bliss, whether you are seeing frank male flesh or a nude figure--more ethereal than corporeal--through a translucent shower curtain.

COPYRIGHT 2002 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group