Slick

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The Bill McClain Collection of Chicago Imagism, Collection of the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art. © Robert Lostutter.

'Mimosa I…Dark Ice,' by Robert Lostutter, 1975.

'Mimosa I…Dark Ice,' by Robert Lostutter, 1975.

This is the new exhibit at MMoCA that’s not the seeded AI experiment by Beeple. This one pairs works of art from MMoCA’s permanent collection (always good to see) with visiting works to create a basis for thinking about or reconsidering the body and representations of the body.

media release: This fall, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art (MMoCA) presents Slick, an exhibition curated by Assistant Curator Eleanor Pschirrer-West that draws from MMoCA's permanent collection and expands it through a series of select loans. On view September 23, 2026–January 31, 2027, Slick brings together photography, painting, sculpture, and works on paper united by a shared interest in fragmenting, concealing, and reimagining the human body.

Fall Opening Celebration and Gallery Night Afterparty

Friday, November 6 • Member Preview, 6 PM • Public Celebration, 7–9 PM

Through abstraction, framing, and concealment, the artists in Slick move beyond conventional figuration, subverting the expectation of a whole and knowable body. Several artists in the exhibition draw directly on their involvement in kink communities, while others take inspiration more broadly from the aesthetics of leather and fetish practices. The exhibition includes major works from MMoCA's holdings in Chicago Imagism, including Christina Ramberg's Tight Hipped (1974) and Robert Lostutter's Gold-Fronted Woodpecker (1981), alongside pencil drawings by the self-taught Chicago artist John Schacht. Schacht was not himself an Imagist, but worked on the periphery of that same Chicago scene and was closely involved in the city's leather scene and gay community in the 1970s, exhibiting work at gay bars and punk dance spaces in addition to traditional galleries. Photography by Paul Mpagi Sepuya, George Platt Lynes, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Marcus Leatherdale extends this exploration of the body and desire across nearly a century.

MMoCA's permanent-collection holdings are expanded through several loans, including stainless steel and glass sculptures by New York artist Hannah Levy, whose biomorphic, industrially finished forms merge the body with the design and aesthetics of science fiction, furniture, and medical apparatuses. Additional loans include Sascha Braunig's Stays (2016), a painting that shares Ramberg's interest in the restraining structures of feminine dress, and colored pencil drawings by Minneapolis-based artist Joe Sinness.

Through education programming, Slick also situates this history close to home. From 1975 until a fire destroyed it in 1996, Hotel Washington, located not far from MMoCA, was one of the Midwest's most beloved LGBTQ complexes, home to the leather-Levi bar Rod's alongside a dance club, music venue, cafe, and guest rooms. Open every night of the year and welcoming to every part of the community it served, the Hotel hosted drag competitions, benefit nights, and holiday celebrations for more than two decades. Slick is an opportunity to place MMoCA's collection within this local history, and to celebrate Madison's own long history of welcoming LGBTQ community.

"Slick gave us a chance to dig back into our own collection—a rich cultural resource right here in Madison—and put those works in conversation with each other, exciting new work, and our community. Our collection reflects the breadth of contemporary concerns artists engage with, and every exhibition we present is an opportunity to use art as a way of understanding who we are and what we're about."  — Eleanor Pschirrer-West, Assistant Curator, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art