Art Gallery Tackles Intimate Issues

As featured in The Windsor Star, March 25, 1999

By Gail Robertson

Aaron Timlin took to the streets of downtown Detroit, Birmingham and Royal Oak last week wearing only boxer shorts and a small cardboard box.

The owner/director of the Detroit Contemporary Gallery was both supported and ignored by curious passers-by. He was also helped and harassed by a myriad of police officers, one of whom threatened to arrest him until he realized Timlin did, indeed, have shorts on.

"It's funny how much it affects people," says Timlin about the illusion of nakedness. "Their imagination goes wild."

And it's that wide range of reactions and emotions the newly opened Detroit Contemporary Gallery hopes to elicit with its "naked" exhibit opening Saturday.

"It's a lot different than nude. We're dealing with more intimate issues," says Timlin.

Not all the pieces on display are explicit - although some do include realistic male and female genitals.

Differing views

Each artist has interpreted the word "naked" quite differently - from traditional nudity to baring one's soul and revealing a behind-the-scenes look at a facelift.

The 26 artist have come from many backgrounds and styles to use paint, sculpture, glass, video, photography and pencil for the "naked" show.

Ed Sarkis, a Detroit artist who has lived and worked in New York and Los Angeles, says he likes to look at the term naked for what it doesn't reveal.

"There is psychological anxiety that if you're naked people can see everything." he says. "I'm interested in the idea that you can be naked and people can't see anything. What if you're naked and there's no knowledge.

His depiction of two men - one based on a Roman statue and the other contemporary - is called Stoneman. "It's another interest of mine, the way in which something is presented, "he says. "It reveals something and it doesn't reveal anything.

"By checking out the exhibit, viewers might get a sense of their connection to the wrd naked and how it shapes their own anxieties.