Working throughout her long life in a variety of media ranging from deeply personal texts to painting and film, Dorothy Iannone fearlessly explored the contours of sexuality, repression, and societal responses to desire. Her US-American roots were an ever-present point of reference, their prudishness and false modesty unrepentantly put to the test through sensually raw representations of female eros and human bodies, as well an open mining of her own sexual experiences and relationships in her work. For Iannone, taboos were myths to be laid bare, and in Berlin she found a context more fertile and kindred than the US; she made it her home from 1976 until her death. Frequently branded as pornographic, her depictions of sexual connection examined the quotidian as well as spiritual dimensions of such unions and ultimately, that of love itself. Transcendence is explicitly suggested in Flora and Fauna (1973), a work patterned as a kind of psychedelic Garden of Eden, with hints of visual references from Ancient Egypt and Greece to early Christian mosaics. Here, a stylized female and male figure, while totemic, are slightly askew in the frame and almost engulfed by the raucous animal and plant life surrounding the scene. A later work, The Sheltering Sky (2010), a small painted cut-out on wood depicting an explicitly romantic moment of erotic surrender captioned by her own writings, is part of Iannone’s series Movie People, which she described as ‘scenes from my favourite films about unconditional loves, or at least, about the sacrifice of one’s own happiness for the sake of the beloved.’ 

Works in the exhibition: Lord Liberty (2019), sculpture, acrylic, India ink on wood, 156 × 130 × 22 cm; The Piano (2009), sculpture, gouache, and acrylic on paper on wood, 24 × 53 × 15 cm; Flora and Fauna (1973), colour silkscreen on paper, 60 × 73 cm; The Sheltering Sky (2010), sculpture, gouache, and acrylic on paper on wood, 53 × 52 × 16 cm; Oh Wasn’t It Just Yesterday (1980), painting, framed acrylic and gouache on board mounted on wood, 59 × 54 cm; Lady Liberty (2019), sculpture, acrylic, India ink on wood, 156 × 126 × 22 cm. Courtesy of Air de Paris & Peres Projects