“Draw outline using a #1/50.mm technical pen.
 Entire height should measure 33 1/4’’
from Orifice to Anus. Fill symbols using Jet Black gouache; Nipple and Urethra do 
not get filled.” 

On the Genital and Erogenous Zone Template, an erotic anatomical chart designed by John Lindell in 1987, these instructions appear in the form of a “drawing note.” The same visual grammar underpins the photograms produced by the artist in the early 2000s, where a constellation of geometric icons replaces the representation of bodies: lines, curves, circles, and arrows are arranged into diagrams, layered and blurred so as to trace trajectories of desire.

Inspired for some by the research models of Christopher Strachey and Alan Turing’s Love Letter Generator, these works operate through abstraction and code, disrupting the economy of pornographic images—their modes of production as much as their visual vocabulary; their ways of staging sexual encounters and fantasy. Each anus becomes a celestial body, composing a Milky Way in which identity, gender, and affect are reinvented beyond figuration. How many times have we loved, or believed ourselves to be in love? It is this space of projection that John Lindell explores.

John Lindell, Put Your Lips Around Yes 
curated by Alexis De Bonis
with a text by Camille Kingué
Opening Thursday June 11, 6-9pm
until July 25th by appointment

With many thanks to Tommaso Corvi-Mora, the entire Corvi-Mora gallery team, Hampus Lindwall, Paloma Lopez.