By Paul Varnell

Contributing writer

Realistic male and female nudes collaboratively produced by gay Venezuelan oil painter Harry Schuster and his partner Gustavo Zajac, who works in charcoal, are currently on display at Chicago’s Moka Gallery on W. Belmont.

Collectively titled “Skin,” the pictures range from 3 feet x 4 feet to 5 feet x 5 feet and consist of two separate panels of approximately equal size. Half of each picture, usually the right half, is painted in sensuous flesh tones by Schuster, while the left half is rendered in black and white by Zajac.

Aligned along the west wall of the gallery are three large pictures of male nudes. They include a rear view of a nude youth with a cloak thrown over his shoulder reminiscent of Michelangelo’s “David,” the face and chest of a languorous or dozing young man and a frontal view of the torso of a heavily muscled, reclining adult male shown from his navel to his thighs, his genitals conspicuously visible. The image resembles a detail of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam.”

The female nudes on the east wall include a woman viewed from the rear, her arms folded protectively over her breasts and a woman with long hair depicted from the neck to breasts.

Schuster and Zajac also collaborate on one small single-panel work, a 2 feet x 2 feet close-up of the pubic area of a young man, a thin loincloth wrapped around his hips with his genitals copiously wrapped so that they protrude conspicuously from his body as if he had a partial erection. The body is painted in oils by Schuster while the loincloth is drawn in by Zajac. There may be a subtle reference here to Daniele da Volterra’s painting over the genitals in Michelangelo’s fresco “The Last Judgment” on the order of Pope Paul IV.

Although none of the paintings is titled, gallery owner Jhonmar Castillo says that the small panel is the early Catholic martyr Sebastian, although he lacks the arrows traditionally shown as penetrating his body. Similarly, according to Castillo, the male figure resembling Adam is suggestively titled “Waiting for Your Arrival.”

In addition to the paintings, the exhibition includes standing pieces and ceiling hangings. The two 5-foot tall standing pieces are 2-dimensional nude representations of Adam and Eve, Adam on one side of each piece, Eve on the other. The pubic area of each, covered only by an apple leaf, is a separate piece attached so it rotates, so each figure can alternatively be viewed with a recognizably male or female pubic area. The tree branch with Adam’s apple leaf also has the fatal apple attached to it.

Finally, hanging at different heights from the ceiling are seven large pairs of eyes, again painted on one side and drawn on the other. According to gallery owner Castillo the eyes are taken from gay porn magazines. Titled “If we are talking about looking,” the pairs of eyes rotate in different directions, blown by the air currents, so they appear to be following the visitor as he looks at the pictures and Adam and Eve.

The watchful eyes—there are also two pairs high up on the walls—make it clear that taken as a whole the works constitute an installation that presents erotic art but also comments on the inhibitions against viewing erotic art, particularly male erotic art, in socially and religiously conservative countries. The eyes represent not only the priests and secular authorities who keep a watchful eye out for people being erotically stimulated, but the culturally induced feelings of guilt or shame that can linger even in otherwise enlightened people.

“Skin,” paintings and drawings by Harry Schuster and Gustavo Zajac at the Moka Gallery, 2112 W. Belmont. Open Tues.-Sat., noon-6 p.m. The show runs through Oct. 12.