Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1880 – Today: Curated by RAW (Rediscovering Art by Women)

Richard Saltoun Gallery presents Unveiled Desires: Fetish & The Erotic in Surrealism, 1880–Today, a two-part exhibition curated by Maudji Mendel of RAW (Rediscovering Art by Women), a private collection and curatorial initiative dedicated to the work of overlooked women artists of the 20th century. Opening during Frieze Week, the exhibition forms part of the gallery’s six-month programme dedicated to women artists in Surrealism and traces more than a century of artistic engagements with eroticism by female and queer artists across painting, drawing, photography, and sculpture.

From the first Surrealist experiments in 1924, which situated Surrealism as a site of liberation, subversion, and desire, to their contemporary reimaginings, the Erotic has always played a central role in the movement. Anchored by Max Klinger’s iconic Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs (Paraphrase on the Discovery of a Glove), (1880/81), and extending to rarely seen works from the RAW Collection, Unveiled Desires establishes a dialogue between historical precedents and their radical afterlives.

Figures such as Marie Vassilief (1884–1957), Meret Oppenheim (1913–1985), Mimi Parent (1924–2005), and Juliana Seraphim (1934–2005) represent the historical foundations of Surrealism’s erotic imagination. Their work is brought into dialogue with avantgarde feminist pioneers including Jennifer Binnie (1958 - ), Renate Bertlmann (1943–), Helen Chadwick (1953–1996), Felicity Powell (1961 - 2015) and Penny Slinger (1947 - ), who expanded Surrealism’s engagement with eroticism and the body in the second half of the twentieth century. Radical queer perspectives intersperse this chronology, from Pierre Molinier (1900–1976) and Ajamu X (1963–) to Jesse Darling (1981–) and Sin Wai Kin (1991–), whose practices confront desire, identity, and power. Emerging voices such as Anna Sampson (1993–) and Siomha Harrington (1997–) extend these legacies into the present, underscoring the persistence of Surrealism’s erotic imagination as a critical framework.

Across both parts, Unveiled Desires demonstrates how Surrealism’s most transgressive themes — fetish, fantasy, sexuality, and the unconscious — have been continually reinterpreted, exposing the movement’s enduring capacity to question systems of dominance, reframe the body, and recast eroticism as a language of resistance and emancipation.

Part 1: Erotic Surrealism – Fetish, Power, and Subversion

The first chapter delves into Surrealism’s entanglement with fetish, performance, and the politics of desire. The exhibition is anchored by Max Klinger’s Paraphrase über den Fund eines Handschuhs Paraphrase on the Discovery of a Glove), (1880/81), a ten-part print cycle often regarded as a precursor to Surrealism. In this fantastical sequence, sparked by the chance encounter of a lost glove at a skating rink, Klinger transforms a trivial object into the centre of a dream narrative involving theft, shipwreck, and monstrous birds. The work highlights the charged eroticism of fetish objects while exposing the hypocrisies of bourgeois morality and the precarious social position of women in modern Berlin. Regarded as his signature series, the Paraphrase established Klinger as one of the first German artists to entwine sexuality, fantasy, and social critique — anticipating Surrealism’s fascination with the unconscious and the erotic life of objects.

Contemporary artist Siomha Harrington has created the new painting Leather Gloves II in direct response to Klinger’s work, reinterpreting its themes of fetish, desire, and social control through a feminist lens for the twenty-first century. Her work sets the stage for a broader exploration of how Surrealist and post-Surrealist artists have mobilised fetish and the erotic as instruments of critique and liberation: Meret Oppenheim’s provocative objects collapse domestic normalcy into uncanny seduction; Penny Slinger’s 50% Visible Woman (1971) fragments the female form into a psychic and erotic enquiry; and Helen Chadwick’s Meat Abstracts (1989) transform flesh into vivid still-lives — seductive and repellent, evoking desire alongside decay. Queer provocateurs like Pierre Molinier and Ajamu X stage the body as theatre of desire and transgression, while contemporary artists such as Jesse Darling and Sin Wai Kin channel these legacies into new languages of vulnerability, resistance, and play.

A dedicated display of Felicity Powell’s wax works, marking the gallery’s representation of her estate, underscores the sensual tactility and psychological charge of her practice, where fragile, translucent surfaces evoke the body’s intimate connection to memory, desire, and touch.

Artists include: Ajamu X, Denise Bellon, Renate Bertlmann, Jennifer Binnie, Helen Chadwick, Jesse Darling, Siomha Harrington, Max Klinger, Béla Kolářová, Alice Maher, Rose Mihman, Pierre Molinier, Meret Oppenheim, Felicity Powell, Marta Rocher, Anna Sampson, Penny Slinger, Sin Wai Kin, Marie Vassilief, Cossette Zeno, Seigle, and others.

Part 2: Erotic Surrealism – Identity, Desire, and the BodY

The second instalment turns to Surrealism’s psychic landscapes, foregrounding how eroticism reveals the unconscious and shapes identity. This chapter considers eroticism as a portal into the psyche: bodies become symbols of desire and repression; dreamscapes expose the irrational; and eroticism itself emerges as a force that resists control. The result is a constellation of works where the erotic is both deeply personal and radically political.

Artists include: Eileen Agar, Denise Bellon, Mimi Benoit Parent, Mary Beth Edelson, Ruth Francken, Aligne Gagnaire, Jane Graverol, Rose Mihman, Bona de Mandiargues, DaddyBears, Anna Sampson, Juliana Seraphim, Elsa Schiaparelli, Ebun Sodipo, Suzanne Van Damme, and others.

More press enquiries, please email: press@richardsaltoun.com