In Search of the Perfect Lover

Notwithstanding their considerable differences and individuality--one would hardly expect them to have a lover in common--Louise Bourgeois, Marlene Dumas, Paul McCarthy and Raymond Pettibon share an artistic intent to explore eroticism and sexuality. Each artist deals, in his or her own stylistic way, with the intense physical states of ecstasy, passion, conflict and fear. Working through the medium of drawing--the "medium of the mind"--they trace themselves, scribing pictorial metaphors of an alternately tender, aggressive, attached, forceful and even erotic confrontation with the material. Creativity, itself never free from conflict, undresses itself in drawings that touch on obsession, desire and the pleasures of eroticism. (In Search of) The Perfect Lovergroups together extensive works on paper from the Hauser and Wirth Collections, complemented by a selection of sculptures. Accompanying texts embrace the connections between body, eroticism, sexuality and creativity, as well as the potential conflicts embedded in each artist's work.