Local artist Kelli Sims thinks outside the box and around the corner in her gallery of selected works titled Juice Bath, which ran in the Harbor Art Gallery until Sept. 23. She uses different foods and materials to represent the continuous loop of filling our hollow self with satisfaction through sex, food or other vices.
Her work is highly sexual without containing blatantly erotic pictures or sculptures of the human figure. For that matter, her artwork on display does not contain any material that would generally be considered remotely sexual in our modern society. Somehow, though, her works gain sensuality when put together and interpreted in a certain way.
The various objects include balloons, plastic, strawberry jam, and Fluff, to name just a few. She states that her art is meant to depict human bodies as “empty vessels reserved for pleasure.” She goes on to explain, “Our bodies are constantly cleansing and filling, in the cycle of gaining satisfactory yet temporary pleasures.”
Through video, sculpture, installation, random objects and photography, Sims is able to allow the viewer to explore different aspects of the human body’s lust for pleasure. She externalizes innards in a deformed and completely unconventional way throughout this exhibit. For example, in her work entitled Pitpop she uses a balloon and cake to represent someone filling the emptiness with pleasure (the cake), and then releasing that pleasure through an explosion after we’ve have had our fill, popping the balloon.
Pleasure is not meant to be portrayed as gluttonous or specifically a bad thing in this exhibit. On the contrary, she believes pleasure can be both good and bad but always naturally sought after by the empty human body. One should go to Sims’ exhibit with an expectation to view yourself in a completely different way and expect to ponder concepts you might not have considered before. It tests social boundaries and brings to light the importance of our universal rituals for gaining pleasure and filling the continuous and recurring void.
Harbor Art Gallery is located on the first floor of McCormick Hall.