Downs Are Feminine

“Lewis Klahr’s DOWNS ARE FEMININE unveils a kind of rainy day, indoor, peaceable kingdom of desultory and idyllic debauchery, masturbatory reveries and hermaphroditic transformations. Klahr’s oneric collages graft ‘70s porn of pallid stubbly flesh flagrantly onto Good Housekeeping/Architectural Digest decor (varicolored crab-orchard stone foyers, modacrylic sunbursts, jalousie windows and orientalist metal scrollwork), interior states where characters despoil themselves in Quaalude interludes of dreamy couplings. In this out-of-touch realm, touching is intelligence gathering for a carnal knowledge that will never attain its platonic ideal. The whole atmosphere is pervaded with euphoria, a hopelessness without despair, a contentment beyond longing. If Klahr’s Yesterday’s Glue presented an after-hours club world of pining narcissists where the mandatory sex, drugs and rock and roll was glacial if not sinister, DOWNS ARE FEMININE presents a world that edges past despondency to become an amoral libertine glade that is at its core abeyant but benevolent.” —Mark McElhatten, Canyon Cinema