Bash Compactor: Once Upon a Penis

The press release said Jessica Yatrofsky is wholly interested in men, and their underrepresented sexuality. Huh? What about Internet porn—the whole industry is geared towards the male sex. But I saw her point: Mainstream America never shows dick anywhere, whether it be flicks, pics or TV commercials.

It was a sweltering Thursday night in Chelsea and I was at the Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery to see Yatrofsky’s performance and show, titled Performance and the Male Nude No. 6. Yatrofsky does a lovely job photographing naked dudes, both composition-wise and in finding delicious subjects. Maybe that’s why the room was so crammed. The one-time performance was designed to complement Self Exposure, the gallery’s current exhibition featuring Zachari Logan, Francesca Romo and Shen Wei.

We were warned the performance would start at 7 sharp, but nobody told me it would be over 17 minutes later. Given New York City’s bumper-to-bumper traffic, some missed most of the show and there wasn’t a drop of wine, beer or even sparkling water in the sweatbox of a room. But who the hell cared—within 10 minutes of arriving, I hit the jackpot, meeting breathtakingly handsome models Edo Tastic and Andrew Yang, as well as Jeffrey Gaunt, wearing black sunglasses and toting a book called Sex at Dawn. “I’m learning a lot about sexuality,” he confided.

With the longhaired and tattooed Yang as model, Yatrofsky re-enacted the famous scene from the 1966 Antonioni flick Blow Up, where the photographer practically fucks the model with the camera. She used four different ones, snapping away as Yang disrobed. “I present my work as live performance to physically confront an audience with the penis itself, either erect or not,” said Yatrofsky, herself a pretty wholesome-looking brunette. “I’m passionate about male sexuality.” The Polaroids she took were scattered on the floor, where they will remain throughout the Self Exposure exhibit.

I wanted to see more nude performance, but that would have to wait until the fall, when Yatrofsky’s book on male nudes will be published. Meanwhile, we bumped into Tastic on the way out. “I’d love to take some photos of you,” I said, eyeing the male beauty’s luxuriant, tawny-colored Afro. Yatrofsky is originally from Las Vegas, where nude performance is more commonplace. “It was hard finding a gallery in Chelsea that would allow it,” she told me. And this is supposed to be the naked city!