For the month of March, Marilyn Minter's seductive and hyperrealistic photographs tower over the art galleries in Chelsea on four spectacular billboards.

SHIT-KICKER, 23rd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues (de-installed on March 28th)
SPLISH SPLASH and RUNS, 23rd Street, between 10th and 11th Avenues (on view through April 3rd)
MUD BATH, 10th Avenue, between 17th and 18th Streets, above The Park restaurant (on view through April 3rd)

Re-creating lush images she shot for fashion magazines, Minter substitutes mud for water, transforming the non-existent fashion ideal back to it's messy, flawed, and very human form. Legs are splattered and perfectly pedicured toes are oozing with grime as if walking through the city in a storm. The billboards are an outgrowth of Minter's interest in blurring the boundaries between fine art and commercial art, co-opting commercial genres and spaces for her artistic practice.

The artwork attracts and repulses but ultimately seduces. Complicit with our own dirty secrets, we succumb to the guilty pleasure of looking at the tainted object of desire, stirring anxieties about our own imperfect bodies and our barely controlled desires.

Minter states: "I'm trying to make an image of what it feels like to look. I want to make a fresh vision of something that's compelling; something that commands our attention; something that is so visually lush that you'll give it multiple readings adding your own history and traditions to the layered content. Some things make you feel transcended; others make you feel slimed. I'm constantly looking for that transcendent moment."

Additional Images of Billboards