REVIEWS OF NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS: New Works by Will Griffith

[EPICENIA, formerly Will Griffith]

Find more photos like this on Art Gallery-Mirage 21
EROTIC ARTIST WILL GRIFFITH CUMMING OF AGE WITH NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS

A Review by Samireh Samadi


Abstract painting is often compared to music. If that's so, then Will Griffith's latest paintings are the big symphony of art. They cry it out and carry you away, and the way they go is like an opus of design and color, with their designs on our emotions and the erotic qualities subtle...until you remember who the artist is.

Of course, it seems weird to say this. Griffith may be quite an eccentric, sexually bold modern artist, but he's not as shallow as the realism of sex on canvas.. And when you study this exhibition of his latest works, NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS, that opens today at Art Gallery Mirage 21 and The Griffith Center, this is probably not the kind of experience you'll be expecting from this artist.

Griffith stands as an erotic master, as perhaps the Warhol or Rothko of our new century. And the pictures he painted are now on exhibit, taking him beyond nudes and genitals and into the realm of the soul, the desire and the emotions of eroticism.

These new works are radiant, exciting, and color-in-climax. The paintings represent involuntary, not masturbatory orgasm and release. They are what his mind recalls from the subconscious when he is sleeping, dreaming and cumming. They're the statements of a deeply serious and tormented and ultimately sexually energetic, though frail individual who can be found in his studio, or outside of it, creating or smoking a cigarette, while masturbating all the while. These works are involuntary, desires and passions in his dreams, dominated by them and unable to enjoy the pleasure of the orgasm his nocturnal emissions have robbed him of.

But put aside reputation and presupposition. Ask yourself, how do these paintings actually work? Work they certainly do. Griffith made a real discovery when he found the inspiration for these works, by using a very restricted sexuality, frames of strong color, cutting-edge and set in simple arrangements, he can stir in the viewer a powerful empathetic and emotional response. We can not deny his ability to move you.

You stand. You stare. And the works, with their fields and layers of design and color, does its sensational work on you. Areas seem to expand and contract, come towards you or sink away. Shapes look positive (a bar) and then negative (a splatter). The edges of colors meet in burns or bleeds. Big contrasts provoke hovering after-images. Voids open and deepen. Forms swell and spread and rise.

Not all of the works are exciting, but they all tell us something about the artist and about ourselves. As a few of the paintings (rather uninteresting), show, Griffith is exploring the emotions of dealing with things we have no control over, in this case ejaculating in a dream state, asleep. They can't be decoded. Griffith refuses explanations. And no wonder. Few works are as open - and as closed - to explanation as these new abstracts. Attempts at description turn to tangles on your tongue. Silence is so accurate as the artist intended (he insisted that the exhibit be presented without accompanying music. "The art is the music", he insisted. Perhaps we should see ourselves less as spectators than as participants.

That is why you should not worry about understanding Will Griffith. You may at first be aware only of your own body, awkwardly stranded in the difficult place he has positioned us. But this acute consciousness is part of a heightened awareness of our own fantasies, sexuality and desires. By tuning your perceptual processes they help you to see what lies beyond the surface world and that whether or not we are awake or asleep. The body remains thirsty for climax and release and will see to it whether we are on the job or totally oblivious to the desires knocking on our sexual doors. These works explore that state, when we are no longer in control and the mind, body and soul create a menage 'a trois on their own

You don't necessarily need Griffith to show you this. But he does and that's the point. How often in our frenetic modern world do we take the time to consider anything with such careful, scrupulous, meditative intensity? Griffith creates the occasion. His works are a bit like the visual equivalents of tantric exploration.

And what if you feel nothing in front of his work? Well, that's not nothing because to feel nothing is one of the strongest feelings you can have. Isn't that the result of a nocturnal emission guys? The men are clearly robbed. They feel none of the sensation, none of the fantasy, none of the excitement as desires build into a crescendo of an intense climax s they sleep. The only thing they feel is the damp spot in the bed where the party took place and they weren't invited. Griffith's new works take us back to the moment, crashing the party and allowing us to see what we missed.

For better or worse, the Nocturnal Emissions makes Griffith a little less of an eccentric artist and a little more of a magician.



NOCTURNAL EMISSIONS REACHES INTO THE SOUL
A Review by Abby Stockli


I am seduced by this exhibition, Nocturnal Emissions, looking inside the sexual energy of Will Griffith. The paintings of this artist are always erotic, some contend pornographic (I disagree that his work is anything less than pure art). We have even witnessed Griffith's photographic self portraits in various states of undress, taking a ritual smoke break, lounging in the heat of the Los Angeles sun, outside his studio, his other hand occupying the tiny, sacred place between his milky white, femininely-boyish thighs. These are sweeter than any photographic porn. They are images in the life of the artist, captured forever.

Forgoing his normal style, Griffith's Nocturnal Emissions is erotic art with a twist.They offer beautifully drafted visual stories of color, shapes, drips and stains, taking us past the body and into the soul of the artist. We get to see what Will Griffith sees when his eyes are closed. They remind me of Rothko, yes, but with an erotic bent.


Sometimes, in Griffith's other paintings, an onlooker glances out at us, and we become acknowledged participants in the spectacle, yet most of us will never partake of such erotic delight. We are odd balls and stragglers--old, young, fat, skinny, female, a rainbow of ethnicities and sexual proclivities who have denied our deepest sexual desires and fantasies for a society that expects us to turn it off, unless, as Griffith has pointed out in the past, it is a beer ad with half naked women with big breasts. Then we are expected to be aroused for the sake of selling beer. Griffith's work is bold and daring. Nocturnal Emissions is something entirely different. This work reaches into the soul, presents us with an inside look into what takes place behind the curtain of our dreams. What ultimately emerges as the utopia here is the unencumbered spirit with which one can pursue their pleasure. If they don't pursue it the mind and body will do it for them. In the masterful strokes of his craft, Will Griffith allows us to pursue this pleasure with him.