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In the XXX show’s introduction, exhibit adviser Steven Heller investigates how graphic design and communication utilize the iconic qualities of sex and sensuality. Such work is often shocking, frank and occasionally clichéd, yet prevalent in many aspects of our everyday life. This show, featuring work from many of the world’s leading designers, provokes a reconsideration of the stereotypes society has created via attitudes towards gender, sex roles, power, romance, and sex in the age of AIDS.

From Plazm: “We’re exploring eh many systems of visual communication that sex brings to design and advertising—gender, humor, romance, the sex act, the list goes on. We’ve fleshed out these ideas with images from leading designers around the world.�? says Joshua Berger. These include some of the most important designers of the late 20th century, as well as emerging talent: Art Chantry, Rebeca Méndez, Frank Kozik, Stefan Sagmeister, Tibor Kalman, Markus Klerzstan, Histeric Glamour, and many others.

Campbell Hall Gallery. Opening reception February 14, 2007, 5 – 7 pm.

Exhibition Dates: February 14 – March 13, 2007. Western Oregon University. 345 N. Monmouth Avenue, Monmouth, Oregon 97361. Susie Nielson, Gallery Director.

Rebeca Méndez’s works in the exhibition:

‘Mediated Eros,’ 1996. Iris print, 40 by 56 inches. ‘Mediated Eros’ printed as an edition of two, print no. 1 is in the SFMOMA permanent collection, curated by Aaron Betsky.

‘Mediated Eros, Degrees of Difference Paper Trail,’ 1996. Fourteen 5.75 by 9 inches inkjet prints.

‘Mediated Eros, Degrees of Difference,’ 1996. 20 second video projection. Sound: RM remix of ‘I Love You’ by Electrotete (by permission of Ben Watkins). In the permanent collection of the Museum of Sex, NY.

‘Mediated Eros, Degrees of Difference,’ 1996.

Description:

Adam lived in Amsterdam and I lived in Los Angeles. We met in Amsterdam, but few days later I returned home, we began communicating and falling in love through e-mail and telephone. The disembodied language of e-mail and a double distance—not only physically but most importantly a distance in “time,�? woke a desperate and silent attempt of making the writing machine into a sensual machine.

I began scanning parts of my body and sending them to Adam. But a still image fell so short from conveying my desire to feel his beautiful white skin on my hands, even if for a few seconds. The closest I could get to his machine and therefore to him was to caress the scanner itself, leaving finger print traces behind also captured by the scanner. And that is how Mediated Eros began. Thirty four frames dissolving onto each other as they press onto the glass. A monotonous and delicate voice softly calls to her lover “I love you�? over and over and over.

I live through my own duration—that is, the flow of time— and Adam through his. We both place our ‘love production’ into an abstract site, into a messenger that primarily moves through time, not space. A sensory expression is thrown into this site, it oscillates in the threshold between projection and memory, it is in my mind, it is passive and virtual in my future/past. When I’m able to be back in my body and in the present, the abysm of the double distance becomes apparent, striking at my very core as I sit in silence staring at the glass of this machine.

Mediated Eros is 20 seconds long and was constructed in a Power Macintosh 7100/80 AV using Adobe Premier and Photoshop and Sound Edit 16 software.