Sophia Rivera's Mythology of Everyday New York

"They belonged to two different series, one printed in a rust-colored red, the other in a deep, purple-hued black and white; something about the rounded, overlapping forms they depicted felt immediately familiar. These must be , I thought to myself, nodding like a dutiful photo historian: Just look at the vignetting and that classic circular lens distortion. As I was practically stroking my nonexistent beard, another idea interrupted: But perhaps they're double exposures, given how the circles intersect and overlap, creating these dark ovals? Alas, no."

"At that very moment, the show's curator, Susanna Temkin, informed the gathered crowd that these were photographs of Rivera's toilet. The "rouge" in her series Rouge et Noir (c. 1976-78) was the artist's used tampons, and those dark ovals at the bottom of the bowl were .... Well, you can guess."

"The force with which these photographs' mysterious beauty had drawn me in was roughly equal to the recoil that this revelation inspired. Conceptual art had pulled another fast one on me. I spiraled for a second, thinking that Duchamp's ""(1917) and its consequences had been a disaster for the human race.Then I realized the entire situation was pretty funny."

"Looking at a woman's poop or used tampon somehow feels more shocking than the deliberate provocation of Andres Serrano's " Immersion (Piss Christ)"(1987), in which the artist immerses a crucifix in his own urine. Yet, unlike going through the trouble of collecting your pee in a tank in order to commit sacrilege, Rivera just d"

A grid of abstract, rounded overlapping photographs initially appears familiar through lens distortion and vignetting. The images are revealed to be photographs of a toilet. The red series, Rouge et Noir (c. 1976–78), uses the artist’s used tampons, while dark ovals correspond to contents at the bottom of the bowl. The viewer’s attraction to the mysterious beauty is met with recoil at the conceptual framing. The shock of seeing bodily waste is described as more immediate than other provocations involving urine and religious imagery. The work is presented as funny and unsettling, producing a mix of wonder, horror, and laughter rather than acceptance.

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