'A Rigged and Sudden Machinery' by Stefan Schwartzman
 at MX Gallery, New York

An idealized human figure, contorted on the page, is pressured into revealing itself as the contraption we know it to be. Our eyes follow the blushed impression of skin into the honed edge of a machine body. Hybrids twist to uncover more precarious psychic states. They are gargoyle-like, constructed from multiple contradictions; dysfunctional and simultaneously exploitable, confusingly impotent while somehow castrating, yet always seductive. In some parts, bodies are disciplined and weighted, in others they appear to hysterically shred themselves. Their distinctions blur still if we consider ourselves in their position, a state of constant negotiation between integrating mechanisms of control into our being or rejecting them violently. 

Schwartzman repeatedly alludes to mythologies of triumphant individualism with references to the figuration styles of Art Deco and futuristic modernism. Glamorous streamlined forms are redirected, casting soft shadows across a dream of boundless optimization. 

Each composition is overwhelmingly erotic, laden with bodies pulled between control and release. Despite the brazen grins and postures, every bit of ephemeral joy represented here is on the brink, spilling into an uncomfortable thought.