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Larry Sultan at Stephen Wirtz - San Francisco
Art in America, Dec, 2003 by Melissa E. Feldman
Larry Sultan's "The Valley," a series ongoing since 1997, offers a behind-the-scenes look at porn films being shot on location in sub-urban homes in California's San Fernando Valley. According to an artist's statement, these are the homes of attorneys, day traders and dentists who rent them for the day to adult film companies. Sultan, who is a native of San Fernando Valley, also points out that these houses are just like the one he grew up in. Previously, the area was featured in his well-known 1986 series "Pictures from Home," which depicted his aging parents living in their stylish 1960s rancher. "The Valley" further scrutinizes American suburbia, its fantasies and facades.
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Surprisingly little in these pictures--11 of which were on view here, from the over 50 comprising "The Valley"--is X-rated. Sultan focuses instead on actors relaxing offscreen, their workaday life on the set, the banal architecture and, above all, the bizarre confluence of these elements. In Woman in Garden (2001), a topless actress pacing a nondescript yard in curlers and cargo pants laughs as she talks on her cell phone. Her sunlit profile blends with the fake lime-stone wall behind her. Nothing about the poolside view of the modern condo in Cabana (2000) is unusual until you notice--partially hidden by a striped tent and a rosebush--the flesh of a tangled threesome.
The fascination of these pictures lies in the way they manifest different realities at once, although in some of them the porn stars look so at home in their temporary quarters that the crucial sense of displacement is lost. The glamorous woman in Boxer Dogs, Mission Hills (2000), for example, strutting by the pool with a cadre of boxers sniffing at her platform heels, could easily pass for the actual lady of the house. Whereas in Kitchen Window, Topanga Canyon (1999), a naked man standing in the kitchen and a thick black cable draped on the countettop clearly do not belong in this domestic setting. Yet even here Sultan catches something interesting: the man's elegant contrapposto and his pensive expression as he gazes out the window create a melancholy, strangely moving picture. The dreamy light transforms even this corny country kitchen into a poetic space. Harmony reigns where you would least expect it.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Brant Publications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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