Joan Semmel, Continuities (until 27 June) at Xavier Hufkens Rivoli, Brussels
At 93, American painter Joan Semmel is just hitting the peak of her powers. A Bronx native, Semmel spent the 1960s living in Spain. When she returned to New York City in 1970 she found what has arguably been her lifelong mission as a painter. “I had returned from Spain looking for the ‘sexual revolution’ and instead found sexual commercialisation that mostly showed female bodies for sale. I wanted to find an erotic visual language that would speak to women. I was convinced that the repression of women began in the sexual arena, and this would need to be addressed at the source.” In 1971, Semmel became well-known for her Sex Paintings series, depicting couples with alien skin tones of tangerine, cobalt blue and fuchsia engaged in un-vanilla sex acts. During the 1980s, Semmel turned her attention to her own body, and Continuities, a single exhibition shown across Xavier Hufkens (Tivoli) and Alexander Gray Associates (NYC), presents an artist still ravenous to define the female form as a locus of self-determined erotic force. —Aimee Walleston
