I think of the artist Aaron Sheppard as the person who is willing to jump off the rocks into the water first, the height does not scare him, nor the sensation of cold ocean water, or whatever lurks beneath the choppy waves…or maybe it does, but he is still determined to make the dive, to be in the moment of discovery, of danger, of sensation. Courage and joy, danger and beauty, these elements all play into a life fully experienced. Immersive and intense, Aaron’s work embraces this way of living…

The artist combines the delectably ribald with a sense the painterly modernism in a wide-ranging body of work that includes assemblages, installations, performances, and mixed media works.

Fragmenting static ideas of sexuality and gender identity, he uses his own body and image as subject repeatedly. Aaron layers this syntax with motifs from diverse sources including 20th century art, erotica, literature, mythology, popular culture, folktales and religion. The oeuvre may be seen as delightfully exhibitionist because it is constantly seems engaged in the sexy theatrics of display. However, there is also a sense of extreme vulnerability and it is this profound fragility that makes Aaron’s work powerful. > Read More

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You can look but you can’t touch. The rubbery, wet-looking pieces in Chris Bauder’s “Strange Glove” solo show at Sin City Gallery ask to be interacted with, but there’s a reason the fleshy assault rifles are protected behind a glass case. He likes the idea of people wanting to interact but having to resist. Bauder takes everyday found objects and makes them mysterious by coating them with a new skin, making each piece both tempting and intimidating like off-limits sexual fantasies. “Strange Glove” runs through March 24 and you can see more of his work at Tilting the Basin contemporary art exhibition through May 14. > Read More

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A toy gun and an old computer mouse sit on a shelf, their plastic shells encased in salmon-pink latex. At least that’s what one can assume they were before artist Chris Bauder transformed them into aesthetically glutinous pieces for his latest exhibit, Strange Glove.

The mouse, titled “Backlash,” now resembles a dominatrix’s whip, and the gun, named “Old Dog,” feels oddly sexual, too. Whether it’s the bright flesh-toned hues or the slimy sheen of stretched latex, these viscid sculptures explore the intimacy and familiarity in the erotic, taboo and unknown.

Bauder has typically used latex house paint three-dimensionally in his work, but in Strange Glove, the Las Vegas-based artist pushes the boundaries of his manipulations even further. “I’ve always been a fan of making work that people want to touch that people aren’t allowed to,” Bauder says. The result is an innate curiosity and desire to reach out and feel the whimsical and bizarre pieces on display.

Bauder says he used these found objects to create a series of weapons that ignite a conversation about sex and violence, turn-ons and turn-offs. “The nature of the work is naturally erotic,” Bauder says. “It’s latex, it’s slick, it’s shiny, it’s sexy. It references taboo and domination. Since I’m showing at Sin City, I was given a little more leeway, so I thought I’d cross that line a little bit more. But it’s not about beating you in the head with eroticism.”

As in past works “Blossoms” and “Study of Navels”—from 2012’s Lush—Bauder uses pink latex paint to craft sexually-charged sculptures that resemble vaginas and nipples in “Pink Parts.” In “Untitled (Green Orb I)” and “Untitled (Green Orb II),” Bauder uses more latex paint, balloons and an LED lighting display to create neon green spheres that glow like two extraterrestrial sacs straight out of Alien. > Read More

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American artist Shelbi Schroeder makes photographs that have a sort of old world breathlessness to them. Her recent White series is made up of landscapes of pristine clouds, the subjects caught at the moment of snowy solitude and purity. Still others show the moment of sexual pleasure, where memories, rivers of time, a sense of other worldliness collide to become a moment of release and liberation. Explicitness has its place, I am no enemy of confrontational sexual imagery, however, we can look to a way of working wherein sensuality is all-consuming, yet not direct.

Nevertheless, I would add the Shelbi does not shy away from direct imagery entirely, her large-scale Instax project involved taking pictures of her nude body for an extended period of time, and asking a select group of participants to do the same.

Through this practice, she is confronted with the feminine bodily self, rather than being confronted with another’s idea of female sexuality and pleasure. These moments brought forth a transformation of her own vision of her true self, the role of desire and agency.  > Read More

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It’s hard to reinvent the nude, but former Las Vegan Shelbi Schroeder has done just that—turned the same old body we’re so used to seeing into something fresh, mysterious and vital. Swoon features nine works in 12-by-12-inch frames, each exhibiting a single Fujifilm Instax Mini color instant photo of a tiny nude body. It’s so tiny, you have to lean into it, face almost against the glass. You stare. The mind blinks. Then it happens: that hard-to-describe transporter moment when an art object becomes a portal to another world.

Schroeder takes us to an ethereal place where bodies seemingly come to life. Hovering on the verge of manifestation, they lift, float and emerge from white ground. In the aptly-named “White #12,” for example, a faint line suggests a hip. The thighs come into view—the head is perhaps discernible, the flesh of the buttocks—but most of the torso blends into a featureless landscape. The body might wholly materialize if you look long enough, or it might disappear back into the nothingness from which it came. > Read More

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Las Vegas-based Iranian artists Ali Fathollahi and Nanda Sharifpour landed in Istanbul, Turkey, the day before the terrorist attacks at Ataturk Airport this summer, finding themselves once again in a heightened political landscape where violence shakes and defines reality.

As jarring as it was, it was familiar terrain for Fathollahi, who’d spent six months of his childhood living in an underground shelter in Tehran with his sister and parents, attempting to survive Saddam Hussein’s missile attacks during the Iran-Iraq war, an experience that plays out in his solo exhibit, Adolescence, on view through September 24 at Sin City Gallery.

Here, Fathollahi’s memories and nightmares are told in narratives packaged in surrealist assemblages and collage works, and overt symbolism lives in every piece.

Born in 1979, the year of the Iranian Revolution, Fathollahi lived through Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq. Adolescence is the artist’s boyhood story, in which hiding in a 10-foot by 8-foot underground room — the size of a small bedroom — reveals all, even the forbidden. Especially in a religious country where so much is taboo, including the sight of his mother’s undergarments hung on the wall to dry.    > Read More>

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Ali Fathollahi is an Iranian-American artist based in Las Vegas.

All his experiences, from being an expatriate of Iran to moving from city to city, have influenced his work and inspired him to create more than “beautiful.”

He has a bachelor’s degree in graphic design and a master’s in fine art from the Azad University in Tehran. This coming semester he begins at UNLV for his second master’s degree.

The Sin City Gallery is showing his latest exhibition, Adolescence, from August 4 through September 24, 2016.

> Discover More

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She’s curated exhibits at the Erotic Heritage Museum in town.

She’s the owner of Sin City
he artistic landscape of Downtown Las Vegas, but quietly.

And yes, she has seen more than 300 hours of adult films (more on this later).

The intriguing Dr. Laura Henkel, who landed in Vegas in 2008, did so with a bang as she helped conceive the Erotic Heritage Museum where she worked until 2010.

“I was very resistant to Vegas in the beginning,” said Henkel. “But now, it’s in my blood. I’m not a true native, but I’m definitely a citizen of Vegas and I take that to heart.”

It’s Henkel’s courage, ideas, concepts and knowledge combined that make her one of Vegas’ finest and most interesting citizens. She’s pushing boundaries for Vegas visitors and locals alike, plus she’s inadvertently changing the artistic landscape through her ventures, some of which include Sin City Gallery and ArtCulture PR. > Read More 

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