KCRW Art Insider
Let’s talk about sex
Tuesday, January 6, 2026
By: Carolina Miranda
Hot Stuff
Jean Lowe, Newsstand (Cracker Barrel), 2025, in SeXObjects at Craig Krull. (Shaun McCracken)
When I was a nerdy tweener in the early ‘80s, a pal used to invite me to her house when her older brother was out so that we could play video games on his PC. When we grew bored of gaming, we would turn our attention to the contents of his desk, which always contained an impressive stack of girlie magazines featuring nude women in gynecological poses. These, we would scrutinize with the intensity of medieval scholars, trying to understand what might be expected of us once we came of age. Whatever it was, I was sure it would involve body glitter and the flexibility of a contortionist.
Two artistic projects — a witty group show at Craig Krull Gallery in Santa Monica and a stunning new book by the LA photographer Reynaldo Rivera — take us back to a time in which questions about sexuality couldn’t be quietly searched on the internet. Instead, answers were pieced together through loose copies of Penthouse and furtive encounters in backseats. It was messy and awkward; it could also be thrilling and wild.
SeXObjects, a group show curated by Hannah Sloan at Craig Krull (one of three worthwhile exhibitions currently on view at the gallery), offers a view of sex through the lens of Gen X, the generation that came into adulthood before the internet began to mediate all the ways people encountered each other. The show is a small one — featuring only six artists — but it’s cleverly presented. The gallery’s walls have been painted pink and a beaded curtain installed at the entrance, an aesthetic throwback to the video and magazine shops of old, where you would find the naughty goods in a discreetly curtained room in the back.
Alia Malley, Laid, 2025, 100ml liquid scent
Slip through the beads and you’ll be greeted by a large installation created by SoCal sculptor Jean Lowe, whose papier-mâché works often examine the more banal aspects of consumerism. (In a solo exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum in 2022, she transformed the museum’s basement into a basement bargain store.) In SeXObjects, she presents a magazine rack bearing hand-painted papier-mâché replicas of adult magazines like Playboy, Hustler, and Derriere. Her bright colors and impressionistic brushtrokes make the magazines feel especially lurid. The collected images (inspired by actual covers) also reveal the frequent use of the U.S. flag as a motif in porn. God bless America, indeed.
In another wall piece, Costa Rican artist Valiente Pastel playfully reimagines erotic playing cards by painting over the figures in abject, cartoonish ways — exaggerating the already exaggerated poses. Nearby, a small shelf presents a scent titled Laid, created by New Mexico-based multimedia artist Alia Malley. This singular perfume is presented in an old CK One bottle and, according to the artist, features notes of “boozy dive bars / Wonderbras beneath baby tees / second-hand leather jackets / cigarettes after sex and mornings of regret / videotape / the ozonic state of charged air at the threshold of the digital.” Viewers are invited to take a scent strip and dip it in the bottle. (Heads up — it’s strong.) Several days out, I’d say that it smells like a chemical reaction between drug store body spray and backseat pleather in an old muscle car.
SeXobjects might seem like a nostalgic lark. But the show gets at the ways in which technology has remade how humans approach sex. Shifting attitudes towards homosexuality, rising rents, and hook-up apps have taken a bite out of the queer nightlife scene. The advent of video and the internet has essentially wiped out porn theaters. Earlier this year, The New Yorker’s Jia Tolentino wrote about the “sex recession” among Gen Z, and how younger people are having less sex even though the internet has made it easier to find than ever. “Presented with a Vegas buffet of carnality,” she writes, “young people are losing their appetite.”
