Heji Shin

As the title of this exhibition “BIG COCKS” might suggest, Heji Shin, is a photographer known for provocative, overtly sexualized, and humorous work, often of singular subjects, such as her May 2016 Artforum cover of a monkey nibbling on a dildo or her colorful portraits of the rapper Kanye West. The “cocks” in this show, her first work since the COVID-19 pandemic began, are all of the same animal species, some more abstract in form, than others.

Titled Big Cock 1 through Big Cock 8, these large-format photographs reveal close-cropped images of roosters. Given the many extended claws, open beaks, and thrashing wings in sight, the testosterone-amped flock surely means business. Big Cock 5 (2020) is phoenix-like in its elegant swoop of a body, almost elegiac; Big Cock 8 (2020) is a blur of feathers, wattles, and comb; Big Cock 7 (2020), a close-up, squawks so ferociously we look down its gullet.

“Everything has to submit to art,” Shin says. “Everything.” This might explain the choice of subject matter. On both sides of the double entendre, "cock" connotes masculine dominance; here, in "BIG COCKS," a range of cocky emotions are on display. Though not divorced from contemporary critique, Shin’s new series offers a welcome respite from wrenching gloom and disorder, dispatching it with a wry smile and a not-so-subtle raunchy joke.