Archaeology of Pleasure

These paintings explore the territory and sensations of pleasure from the inside out. They use erotic, biomorphic forms that in¬ter¬twine and fold back on themselves, creating ambiguity about where one form begins and an¬other ends. The forms suggest and insinuate without becoming anything fixed or knowable; they make reference to bodies and internal organs without ever literally becoming these things.

An Archaeology of Pleasure is loosely based on parler femme, a linguistic theory developed by the French Feminist author Luce Irigaray. The best English translation of this is not to speak about women or for women, but to speak as woman. This speaking as woman involves “speaking woman’s pleasure” and uses the trope of “two lips touching” as a way to represent the idea that meaning, though it cannot be truly fixed, is found through context; it is through the touch¬ing of forms (or words), their placement and connectedness, that they derive their significance.

— Susan Brenner