Bite 22: Édouard Levé - Pornographie, 2002

Untitled, from the series 'Pornographie', 2002

A twisted family portrait or a bizarre, neutered porno? It appears an awkward couples dinner party gone haywire. Private fantasy as a perversion of social convention.

While employing the established language of filmed sex the scene evokes the absent, the subjects' faces hidden just as their sexual organs are. 

Explanation is withheld also. Clinically cold and bland, the environment is stifling to even regard, the characters appearing profoundly alienated even as they mock intimacy. Being a portrait (or rather non-portrait) without faces, encourages viewing the tableau as a dead-pan, geometric study in shape or even as a still-life. Reduced to the almost abstract, and lacking eroticism, the situation plays on the inherent absurdity of human sexual scenarios.

Sources:
Frieze Magazine, Issue 134, October 2010.