BOOBS Now №1

POV contemporary is pleased to announce the inaugural edition of BOOBS Now №1, an annual group show comprising 11 artists across a range of artistic disciplines. Presented in collaboration with Galerie Philipp Anders at Leipzig's Spinnerei area, the exhibition upholds a non-hierarchical approach to curation, reflecting the natural and diverse aspects of human identity with a focus on female and non-binary perspectives. BOOBS Now №1 opens 1.11.2024 and runs through 3.1.2025. The first edition of BOOBS Now №1 focuses on the story of Medusa. Like the unfolding significance of this mythic figure across history, the works on view communicate polyvalent messages about perspective and embodiment. While all the artists featured come from different backgrounds, taken altogether their works converge around a common allegorical center: each artist concretizes values such as endurance, strength, and vulnerability in terms of a cosmological body, a material substrate. Just as the Medusa myth suggests the limits of embodiment, that what looks and acts fluidly at one moment can be turned into stone the next, the artists here communicate something in their works that doesn’t reduce itself to strictly material or physical terms. In Anouk Lamm Anouk’s Lesbian Jazz, for example, bodies appear naked only to sidestep the social coding and histories that clothing references. Encompassing textual symbols and motifs interwoven with figuration, their work captures the experience of closeness and purity through a recontextualization of embodiment. In an analogous way, Sabrina Podemski’s partitioned, mixed-media work invokes division and compartmentalization, while delineating something deeply soothing that simultaneously disrupts and foregrounds physicality. Without the prospect of transforming our perceptions, and her air of rage, Medusa would never have had such a lasting influence. Anna Steinert, with her stormy abstractions, depicts great blasts of color sectioned out into gestural geometric washes, and might be said to represent Medusa's rage aspect. The paintings of Felicitas Goltz, for their part, take a perspective on seemingly ordinary objects and events. that highlights their essential strangeness. A man tying his shoe, for example, in the acrylic on canvas work, Just Another Man (2024), radiates a complex emotional texture that could be parsed into anger, sadness, astonishment, or desire. The storied ambiguity of the picture’s overarching theme shines through all the exacting detail by which it’s rendered. The figure of the Medusa has an apotropaic meaning. In the context of the current exhibition she serves as a kind of guardian, ensuring inclusive conversation and inviting a variety of perspectives. Through the lens of Medusa’s history, symbolizing complexity, resilience, and transformation, BOOBS Now №1 gathers different artistic positions liberated from narrow, sexualized interpretations.