Aneta Bartos‘ recent series, Boys, explores male masturbation, the penis the focus of the compositions…a lightning rod. Spider Monkeys is the complement to Boys its negative space. The images do not possess such a point of concentrated energy, they are envelopes, origami. Like the limbs of a spider, like webs, their power is to encompass, to hold. Their domain is to wrap, then to nourish secrets… And to choose when to reveal them.
Female nudes are in the throes of taking form, quite well along the way, but not there yet, amphibious creatures inhabiting a dripping, dreamlike, watery, world of the womb, subterranean physically and emotionally. The unconscious shrouds awareness as does the dark ether of Aneta’s uncertain locations. Emotions surface in the form of strange bodies, coming into existence, being born.
The embryonic state is depicted, cell division referenced in Split and Seahorse, birth foretold in Hatch, and Argiope. But it is larger than the specific birth heralded, it is the Great Birth alluded to, repeated reference to our place of origin… The Sea: Brachyura, Octopus, Sea Monster.
Seed has been spilled in Boys, swims into the incubational space of Spider Monkeys. Life begins.
Aneta has elected to illuminate precisely this moment of imminent realization: a becoming conscious of emotions heretofore unknown or ignored, an awakening. Birth may be painful, but it is an enlightenment. In the beautiful image of a pregnant woman, Expectant, the lamp glows, holding vigil, patient symbol of approaching clarity.
Text by Nick Weber
