It’s a good sign when an art show has a bit of a scent. Too often, art exists outside of the hustle and bustle of everyday life. It hangs on perfectly smooth, white walls. It sits in mostly empty, climate-controlled spaces. Even when there’s texture and novel materials at play, viewers have to keep their hands to themselves.
But a sniff? A sniff is allowed.
Before the May 29 opening of Service Tension, a group show at the San Francisco Arts Commission main gallery, the smells emitting from some of the artworks were strong enough that windows were opened. A month in, the scents that remain are less aggressive, more intriguing: leather, polyurethane rubber, silicone and linen.
It’s fitting that Service Tension engages as many senses as possible. The show, curated by Elena Gross and Leila Weefur, opens with a quote from “Butch Blow Job,” an essay by Jenny Johnson: “May whomever needs to hear this — feel more, feel further.”
The exhibition is filled with abstracted scenes of queer intimacy and desire, starting with an enormous photograph by Xandra Ibarra, part of her ongoing Hickey Series. In the image, a person lifts dark hair to reveal the tell-tale burst blood vessels on their back, while someone else’s tattooed hand rests gently on their neck.
That combination of spikiness and tenderness is echoed in Ricki Dwyer’s dyed textile work Bound (-), where perceived softness is negated by the steel nails that keep the piece pulled taut over stretcher bars. Whether weaving, binding, draping or piercing, the six artists of Service Tension all manipulate their materials in precisely controlled — and titillating — ways.
Tiona Nekkia McClodden, a Philadelphia artist, has just two pieces in the show, but their monolithic power is undeniable. The satiny leather surfaces of NEVER LET ME GO | XXII. only by special order and NEVER LET ME GO | V. irrevocable, wrapped in shibari knots, are elegant stand-ins for bodies. Colored with leather dye and shoe polish, they have an almost iridescent sheen. Also, see above re: sniffing.
Beside McClodden’s work, Salimatu Amabebe’s two neoprene rubber pieces hang like a before-and-after: the patched-together, mostly solid River next to the shredded, braided Rush. (For these, along with four neoprene rubber sculptures on neoprene rubber-coved pedestals, close proximity isn’t necessary to get a whiff of Amabebe’s preferred material.)
Service Tension delights in pairing restraint with abandon: a light touch and a tight knot. The show’s back half turns slightly more playful, starting with Sasha Kelley’s unexpected arrangement of Portraits of Chocolate Chip. In a large color photograph on the wall, Chocolate Chip, mostly nude, looks at the camera sedately from all fours. Below, on an angled sheet of plywood, there’s Chip from above, laughing with eyes closed on the same blue carpet. It’s a vertiginous, topsy-turvy display, another version of before and after.
(Some of that tumble is also present in Autumn Wallace’s painting Use Case, a violet swirl of hoof and human with an open mouth labeled “Passage.”)
The star of the show is Ibarra’s Free To Those Who Deserve It, an ongoing sculpture series made out of colorful vices and pierced silicone genitals. Displayed in five cut-out windows within a standalone wall, the sculptures hint — peep-show-style — at a wobbly comedy, even when struck through with an impossibly long nail.
Floating diaphanously above the rest of the show’s material solids, Dwyer’s textile work shifts the mood to one of relaxed (satiated?) comfort. Psychically Milked fills one large room with a complicated drape of intersecting planes. Its expanse of woven cotton and linen is anchored to angled two-by-fours with chrome-plated, cast brass Hershey’s kisses. Twelve of these are also presented, jewel-like, in a clear plastic case, sweetness personified.
In their exhibition text, Gross and Weefur describe how an “erotic circuit” is created between artist, artwork and audience — one that exists without the need for physical touch. It helps that the pieces in Service Tension act on viewers in such evocative, sensory ways. After a deep inhale and a lengthy gaze, you may leave the gallery buzzing with that electricity: all tense surfaces, prickly with possibility.
‘Service Tension’ is on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission main gallery (401 Van Ness Ave.) through Aug. 23, 2025.