NSFW: Eva Mueller Exhibition Installation

Text by Elaine Rita Mendus | Images by Coco Dolle

How do you immerse a person into a space, especially a space that does not exist? It’s a question that many artists struggle to answer, even with common spaces that anyone has access to. Many films and photographs fail to convey the place they’re depicting, even easy to reference places can be poorly represented and take the audience out of the scene.

However, Eva Mueller and Man Parrish have managed to, temporarily, recreate a bygone space and era in a basement performance space in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. SPERM. is a visceral, physical experience that takes the audience back to the hot, sticky, and primal energy of gay night life events hosted at The Cock, an iconic gay bar in the East Village, during the 1990s. Mueller’s work not only evokes the past through the visual, it uses physical, audio, and even scent cues to take the attendant back to this forgotten past.

GoGo dancer Brian B, producer Man Parrish and photographer Eva Mueller at the opening event of SPERM. at Art Club, May 2021. Image credit David Mandel, 2021

GoGo dancer Brian B, producer Man Parrish and photographer Eva Mueller at the opening event of SPERM. at Art Club, May 2021. Image credit David Mandel, 2021

The immersive installation was hosted at Art Club, curated by Joseph Latimore. Upon entry, I was greeted by a strange sight post 2020. No masks. Everyone was mask free, yet vaccinated. As someone with both of my COVID vaccines under my belt, it was a breath of fresh air. At this point, mask-free spaces seemed as much of a relic of the past as the place SPERM. sought to re-create. 

Art Club’s ceiling is as irreverent as the maskless patrons themselves, with a sacreligious rendition of Christian heaven. RuPaul takes the place of Adam in the Sistine Chapel, God replaced with the gaping maw of a sex doll. Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate infamy has had his face plastered upon the body of an angel, and Shoko Asahara sits next to him with a crown on. Directly ahead of me and past the bar lies the entrance of SPERM. it is a back room concealed by a trashbag black tarp with a stylized sperm on it. It is in here, where we are taken back from the hellscape that is the COVID-19 era to the primal, animalistic space that is The Cock’s sex parties.

Mueller and Parrish worked together to bring back the space from the dead. Parrish’s six-hour playlist of songs that he would play during his tenure as the creator and producer of SPERM. at The Cock provide the audio ambience necessary. Don’t expect to be jarred or confused by any of these songs pumping through the speakers and brought back to 2021. You’re in a free, wild, animalistic space in New York City.

Mueller’s photographs, models, and performers pepper the space. Go-go dancers gyrate their hips, while engorged cocks are an omnipresent showpiece. Visitors are led through tight spaces, an adequate replacement for the corridors of sweaty male flesh, into the main room. This provocative maze is supplemented by Mueller’s photographs of some of The Cock’s decadence.

Upon entering the main space, the visitor is greeted by a wall of profanity spray painted in orange and lime green neons.  Many of these words, like fag and tranny, are slurs that would be thrown at gay men. It feels like a bold reclamation of slurs and pejoratives that were used to defame and humiliate the men who would visit this space.

The main space doubles as a dance floor, complete with a bartender and party favors. Champagne flows and bodies gyrate together in a hedonistic Bacchanalia. Mueller and Parrish have given us a glimpse back at an era that seems far too distant from our own.

However, it is an optimistic piece. We are not encouraged to mourn the loss of Sperm. or to yearn for its heyday. Rather, the attendant leaves Sperm. with a sense of optimism. The Summer of New York City that politicians seem so desperate to create seems possible. It seems tangible. It’s going to be carnal and primal, as well.

- Elaine Rita Mendus, 2021.