Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: 30 Years of Being Cut Up

30 Years of Being Cut Up at Invisible-Exports is a retrospective of Genesis Breyer P-Orridge’s collage and photographic works. The show follows the story of P-Orridge’s transformation of being taken apart and reassembled throughout h/er thirty-year journey to find a sexual middle ground. The creation of a “pandrogynous” being with h/er partner along with an interest in the sexual milieu of the 20th and 21st Centuries gives the works a perspective that is both admirable and not regularly seen.
The artwork takes cues from both personal experience and artistic movements like Dada and Surrealism through the use of photo collage and provoking imagery. The images take on complex range of subjects including gardens filled with severed heads to confrontational collages of genitalia and sexual activity. The juxtaposition in works such as Untitled (mail art to Jerry Dreva) combine nudes, English iconography, and young ladies in order to ask the viewer to reassess ideas associated with sexual, cultural, and personal identity.
The collages are only part of the gallery space. Also presented are images of P-Orridge’s own transformation from male to female as seen in Two Into One We Go. This photographic series and others bring the sometimes oversexed images down to a personal level. Shock value was the working method for the art that influenced P-Orridge, but s/he uses both shock and a photo-documentary style to connect to the audience. The straightforward approach to all of the artwork makes the idea of “being cut up” more than just stylistics, but a necessary link between private experience and public presentation.