London based artist Jan Manski conjured this eerie world, this sculptural and installation work known as Onania. Onania, an archaic word for ‘masturbation’, explores physical pleasure and vanity taken to disturbing ends. Manski’s installation appears to depict some future (or perhaps present day) civilization in which self-image, plastic surgery, physical augmentation, sexual pleasure and fulfillment all intertwine to the exclusion of other concerns. A shade of pink pervades Onania that is at once fleshy and recalls sterile medical environments. The installation is somehow simultaneously natural and synthetic, gory and plastic.
