This fall, the Neubauer Collegium will present a suite of new works by Soviet-born Israeli artist Zoya Cherkassky. Teasingly titled The Global Political Crisis, the exhibition will consist of erotic drawings in Cherkassky’s signature diaristic style and four large acrylic paintings with similarly charged content, as well as an erotic sculpture and a small collection of jokey pornographic tchotchkes. Touching on the vexed issue of free speech at a moment when political and cultural leaders seem to have very clear ideas about what art should say and do (or, just as patronizingly, what it shouldn’t say and do), Cherkassky’s humorous paean to the “joy of sex” offers a vision of everyday desire that stands in knowing, defiant contrast with the planetary polycrisis alluded to in the title.
Please note: This exhibition includes sexually explicit material.
IMAGE: Zoya Cherkassky, The Loner (detail), 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Fort Gansevoort, New York.
