There is something deliciously unexpected about it. An art show by seven women, specifically dedicated to guilty feminine pleasures, that includes an entire wall of nothing but … hyper-masculine WWF wrestlers?
Nicole Hayden’s splashy portraits of ’80s wrestling stars — including Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage and The Iron Sheik — are fantastically alive with shirt-ripping, muscle-flexing bravado and a steady stream of questionable wardrobe choices. It is Hayden’s work that’s unquestionably the star of Guilty Pleasures, a new show at 111 Minna, curated by Amandalynn and Emily Fromm, and produced entirely by artists from the Bay Area.
Amandalynn, best known for injecting sumptuous beauty into the grittiest of urban environs via her large scale murals, here leans far more into the pleasure than the guilt. Her contributions to the show are exactly what we’ve come to expect from her: sensuous depictions of powerful women combined with delicate images of the natural world. Lovely they are, but aside from Something About a Sundae — a vivid meshing of girly and gummy delights — they are almost entirely guilt-free.
No such problem exists for Messy Beck’s cubist-inspired paintings — another highpoint in the show — that explore defiantly unfiltered incidents of sexual expression. The pleasure and the guilt scream from the canvas in equal measure, one part discomfiting, one part mesmerizing.
Amandalynn’s co-curator Fromm usually makes bold and colorful renditions of Bay Area landmarks. For Guilty Pleasures she’s focused on the sleazy delights of a variety of cheap motels. The fine establishments she’s immortalized here include San Francisco’s Geary Parkway Motel and Sunnyvale’s Sundowner Inn.
