Skin in the Game: Curator Zoe Lukov Explores the Language of Touch

“Having skin in the game is about power, danger, currency, play, joy, indulgence as well as the taboo, the voyeuristic and the hedonistic," said Lukov, an independent curator based in Los Angeles. “There is an inherent violence and vulnerability, as well as a promise of pleasure, that comes with being in one’s skin. This is an opportunity to explore skin as a site of potential transmission, of hand-sanitized stickiness, of lost contact. There is a desire to understand what touch can be now—the ecstasy after global isolation.”

Welcoming contributions by 35 artists, Lukov has created a powerful narrative that expands to include topics secondary to the language of touch—like color, race, sport, the erotic, and ideas of risk and vulnerability—which are particularly poignant given the masks, distancing, and sanitizing of the ongoing pandemic. Though the presentation is a visual one, the works on view explore themes of tactility, harnessing the experience of touch in each artist’s chosen medium, including textiles, photography, painting, sculpture, and more.

On view, the exhibition features works like Hank Willis Thomas’s image of a muscular torso called Scarred Chest, Lynda Benglis’s silvery mound of melted metal, Eat Meat, and the thought-provoking doe-meets-woman’s-body by Isabelle Albuquerque titled Orgy for 10 People in One Body: 5. Viewers can also expect to find the inclusion of artists like Marilyn Minter, Sheena Rose, Eduardo Sarabia, Gabriel Rico, and Carlos Betancourt.