GODOG, 2020

GODOG

In both real and imagined histories, the concept of palimpsest reflects the evolution, erosion, erasure, stratification and reinvention of societal and material formations. Arguably most compellingly in the history of art, the female form exemplifies this palimpsest: deified and objectified, elevated and denigrated, at once transformed and transformative. Playfully coalescing the divine and the banal, GODOG re-envisions sex, power, and the representation of the female form. 

From the earliest sculptures to contemporary works in an array of media, the ‘Venus’ figure has informed human art for millennia. The earliest undisputed depiction of a human being, the Venus of Hohlen Fels, was crafted from the tusk of a woolly mammoth c. 36,000 BCE. Venus figures have been recovered both in caves and open-air locations, sacred and ceremonial locales, as well as burial places throughout the world. Symbolizing fertility, sensual pleasure, creation, ritual, and death.

Throughout art history, female representation runs from shame to worship. Portrayed with conflicting roles as in Mary Magdalene the saint or whore, Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Bust of Constanza Bonarelli. Gustave Courbet’s L’Origine du monde painting was regarded as blasphemous upon its inception, portrays the vagina as the anatomical and material origin of human life, and underscores the fraught and multifaceted historical relationship to female sexuality and the male gaze. The resurgence of goddess cults in the late 20th century and the significant re-envisioning of the Venus motif in works such as the Met’s Facade Commission of Wangechi Mutu, Salvador Dali’s Venus with Drawers, Jeff Koons’ Balloon Venus, Takashi Murakami’s Miss Ko2, Louise Bourgeois’ Nature Study, and Sarah Lucas’ Random Mother and Nice Tits. These works exemplify the refracted notions of subject and object, representation and volition with regard to the female form.

In the GODOG family, Pussy Buddha, Angel and Hello among others, viscerally engage with this legacy, tracing transhistorical resonances both aesthetically and thematically. The reimagined Venus figures are at once subject and object, goddess and plaything, both idol and provocateur. This coterie of figures embodies a diverse array of gender and post-gender ideals. A lounging male figure captures the sensual languor of the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, considered by the Romans to represent the height of love. An angel with two faces displays both masculine and feminine elements. Conjuring the fetish objects of ancient worship rites, two phallus-headed figures subsist in dialogue with the Pussy Buddha. Her configuration, unapologetically featuring her genitalia as countenance, recalls the oyster, who’s self-contained gender fluidity resists hierarchical and binary gender structures.

Unflinchingly engaged with both material and conceptual evolution, GODOG offers a current, historically situated yet forward-looking approach to pleasure, transformation, and transcendence. —Claudia Grigg Edo

The Pussy Buddah

Rooted in an historical legacy of anthropomorphic female sculpture, extending from the Upper Paleolithic Age to the present day, the Pussy Buddha both engages with and subverts this legacy with radical implications for sexual representation. Each figure is, in essence, a Venus figure, a nude statuesque goddess, yet defined by a notable departure from tradition: the pussy is prominently displayed on the face. Historically, the term ‘pussy’ dates back to the 1500s, initially as a term of endearment. The expression was eventually vulgarized during the 1800s, which also hosted the ascent of Victorian morality, colonialism, and industrialization. The Pussy Buddha reflects a consciousness of these ramifications, not strictly as an emblem of reclamation, but as a kind of real-time artifact, an anachronistic relic created for the purpose of future discovery.

Select GODOG figures are sculpted from Pietra di Luserna, a sedimentary stone from the Cottian Alps of northwestern Italy. The stone belongs to the Lower Permian Age (c.299–252 million years ago), an era triggered by the end of the Carboniferous Period, named for the prolific coal beds formed during this time, and concluding with the Permian-Triassic Event, the world’s most devastating mass extinction. In this dynamic, the work shares a grounding with other elements of Rogers’ practice, such as the extinction eulogy R.I.P. and The World Is Your Oyster in which the Pussy Buddha also appears. Other materials include bronze, utilize in sculpture since approximately 2500 BCE, and natural clay, a component of such early Venus figurines as the Venus of Dolni Vestonice, c. 26,000 BCE. Exposed in Rogers’ work to environmental factors causing deep cracks and fragmentation, these figures undergo a natural yet expedited aging process, ultimately coming to resemble the very earth from which the clay was originally extracted.

Ensconced in these material choices is the notion of palimpsest, a layering of both material and ideological structures. The GODOG series is informed by the burying and unearthing of cultures and ideas. In contraposition to the enshrinement and fetishism of the traditional Venus motif, the Pussy Buddha appears de-shrined, more imposing than life-sized, unapologetic and decisively unmoored from a heritage of shame and repression. Inspired by artists’ work such as the Japanese shunga ukiyo-e woodblock print by Utagawa Kunisada Hatsune Shunshoku dar ume, Marcel Duchamp’s Wedge of Chastity, Louise Bourgeois’ Maman, Tracey Emin’s The Dark Hole, George Condo’s Figures in a Garden, Dan Finsel’s untitled sculptures (2019), Juliana Notari's sculpture Diva, Anish Kapoor’s Hysterical Sexual, and Betty Tompkins’ Sex Works.

The Pussy Buddha’s posture further acknowledges, yet undermines, the historical depiction of the female. In her seated pose, one hand is positioned on her lap and the other is gently extended in a calm, confident posture suggesting the embodiment of tolerance. In a secondary posture, she appears bent at the waist, looking out from between her spread legs toward the viewer. Termed the ‘hello’ posture, the impression is of playfulness made all the more jarring by the anatomical particularities of the sculpture.

The notion of genitalia-as-countenance might be read as the logical conclusion of the history of female objectification, but it is also, at its core, an intrinsically and quintessentially feminine symbol of power and origin of life. Likewise, The World Your Oyster video and paintings examine the exploitation and worship of the subject/object. As the Pussy Buddha attests, idolatry and denigration are not opposites, but obverse sides of the same proverbial coin. There is arguably no more salient symbol of this duality than the Venus sculpture, at once a standard of power and subjugation, fetishization and empowerment. Past, future, and an extraordinarily fraught present. — Amanda Miller