Quickie with Ignasi Monreal
Send nudes to the Da Vinci of Dick Pics
A mattress on the floor littered with dirty socks, multiple X-rated browser tabs open at once, and one hand constantly refreshing the apps, just in case. Sound familiar? This sordid tableau takes centre stage in artist Ignasi Monreal’s solo show, ‘Only Friends’. The exhibition just opened at Fertile, the little sister of the ultra chic art space Palazzo Monti, in the Northern Italian gem of Brescia. Fresh from launching our latest issue – featuring a selection of Ignasi’s sext paintings – BUTT co-hosted the buzzy opening party in a former glass factory. Some of the painted dicks were even in the room with us that night.
Sporting a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “your nudes are safe with me”, Ignasi walked us through his love-hate relationship with digital intimacy. In one room is a replica of horny teenage Ignasi’s desk, with the webcam on the family computer streaming live to strangers online, and well within reach of a box of tissues. In the next, a table full of devices resembling an Apple store, each with intricately painted thirst traps sent by friends and anonymous lovers. Usually known for his high-fashion collabs, this is the artist’s first pivot to the pornier side of life.
Colin: Hey Ignasi! I almost tripped over your dirty socks, what the BUTT am I looking at right now?
Ignasi: This is my bedroom when I come home from a night out. When I was doing only advertising for luxury brands, everything had to be perfect and aspirational, and it made me want to paint the dirty stuff. So my previous show [at Palazzo Monti] was a diary of the food I ate, and for this one I was like ‘let me do a diary of all the things I jerked off to!’
You’ve been busy painting a lot of nudes…
Yeah, these are all pictures I’ve sent or received. It’s the first time in the history of humankind that we have all this power of self representation… And it’s funny how dehumanized, cropped, and obviously objectified bodies become on a screen. With sexting and porn there’s this immediate release of dopamine.
Do you take a lot of nudes?
One of the best things about being sober right now is that I’m doing a lot of exercise and my body is changing. Now, suddenly, it’s not just vanity, but discovering your body and seeing how it’s changed through the camera and through nudity. I take a lot of them because I have a shower with a very sexy reflection, and I’m like… whoa! It’s self-representation in that way.
For sure.
You don’t see your own body unless it’s in a mirror or through a phone. But with the phone, you frame it and crop it and curate how you want to see yourself. It’s interesting to see how screens are affecting us.
So after this process of painting dozens of dick pics, have you still been sending nudes, or has it like, changed your relationship to online intimacy a bit?
Now, after looking and consuming so much for this show, it was a lot… I was disgusted. It’s not like it’s changed my life… I mean, it’s cathartic, because you see what it is, but that doesn’t mean that it’s so easy to stop. Listen, I’m not criminalizing or saying anything is bad. On the contrary, I think it’s amazing, and I love sending and receiving nudes, I’m like… please!
When’s the last time you sent one?
Last week… to the guy in that picture over there with the monster cock (points).
Wow… As well as the nudes, a lot of the work we’re looking at is about online porn. What’s your own relationship to that?
I remember growing up in a small town, where there were apparently no gay people, and all I could see was porn. So I was like, ‘is that what it means to be gay?’ (Laughs) Everybody’s fucking like this (gestures) and choking and everything… Which is fun. We love it, but you’re trying to unpick what sex is for you. Like… Is there room for romantic love? I’m not even asking for that, but what are the other options? I feel like I’ve been tunnel visioned.
Has creating this exhibition made you reflect on that a bit more?
Yeah, so I created the installation of the desk from my teenage bedroom. That’s when my relationship to pornography started, you know… and hiding it. I had a girlfriend, but I’d be jerking off to gay porn. As a kid, you become very wise at hiding it, and that’s the behavior of an addict. Like now that I’m going to therapy, I’m like… fuck, maybe I was addicted to porn all these years, and I didn’t even know.
Did you have any gay sex icons as a teenager?
My first crush was Aladdin (laughs). There’s something about his eyebrows… his very big eyebrows and his big hair entice me, and he’s got a great smile.
Now that you’ve started bringing your sex life into your art, will it make its way into your other work?
I stopped doing advertising work because it was driving me loco, so I’m starting to produce a movie. I recently renovated my house, and when I was celebrating with my architect, one of our first ideas was that we wanted to shoot a porno there, because it felt so clean and pure and majestic and elegant, so that would be the most punk way to deface it.
What’s next for you once the exhibition is over?
I’ll be going to Japan to study calligraphy. I’m going to go to see my sensei, she’s 76 years old, it’ll be all the ladies from the neighborhood and me. They don’t speak English – we speak through the phone, it’s amazing.
We can’t escape them… Anything last words to say about sharing nudes before we go back out to the party?
It’s part of what makes technology human. Robots, AI… they would never send nudes. Not on their own.
‘Only Friends’ is on show until November at Fertile, a new offshoot of Palazzo Monti in Brescia, Italy.