Mariano Chavez's exhibit at Linda Warren Gallery is at once bracing and classical, which is something of an achievement considering a well-known porn star features prominently. Chavez's May Flowers, on display until the 20th of June, features large oil paintings, silk screens and his popular posters created for rock shows.
The initial painting of the show is First Date (2008, shown above) which depicts two groups of nederthals meeting, remeniscent of Stanley Kubrick's 2001. The painting also sets up a surprisingly linear narrative of art and civilization, beginning at the dawn of human history. The early humans appear to be warring, one group carries flowers while the other threatens them with malevolently glowing blue orbs. Aside from recalling 2001 this scene also recalls images from the sixities with hippies putting daisies in soldiers rifles, suggesting the binary of peacefulness and aggression is not a cultural condition (as suggested by some in the sixities) but rather a biological one.

The Silver Line is a very large oil painting featuring a porn star (identified as Wendy Whoppers by the gallery information) with very large breasts. Appropriating pornographic images has been used by different artists for different purposes, from Robert Mapplethorpe to Richard Prince. What initially seems a very sexist, even misogynistic depiction of this woman gains nuance when seen in terms of the other paintings displayed. In the context of the aforementioned First Date, and especially African Mask Night /The Lesson (2008, seen below) in which a squatting woman wearing a mask (a quote from Picasso's masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) presents the encircled boys with two fertility figures unmistakably resembling the neolithic statue Venus of Willendorf, Chavez's The Silver Line takes on new meaning. In this context Wendy Whoppers is recast as an ancient fertility figure, flowery shapes surround her vagina and a milk-like substance