“Fuck Art: A Street Art Occupation” at the Museum of Sex brings together the work of 20 artists with the intent to create a dialogue around sexuality and visual provocation in public.

With 20 contributing artists, the styles of the work within the exhibit vary. The street art claimed by the exhibition title is there in the form of piece-style graffiti, “Hello, my name is” stickers and wheatpaste signage. There’s a painted mannequin displayed in a mock storefront and a cartoon bear with eight breasts displayed on the floor like a sidewalk chalk drawing. There are canvas paintings, acrylic-on-plexiglass, and multi-media including wood, cardboard and velvet. The work is what we do see, what we could see and what we can’t see in public.

As the style varies, so does the tone. The work can be shocking (a graffiti mural of a penis streaming semen spelling “LUSH” before landing on a woman’s tongue), silly (DICKCHICKEN’s Scooby-Doo with a penis protruding from the dopey hound’s cranium in “Dreams of Childhood”), sensual (impressionist crayon-on-cardboard renderings of mid-coital figures in Mode2’s “Urban Affairs Extended”), or surreal (Patch Whiskey’s mannequin with a hypnotist’s spiral on one breast, a nuclear hazard symbol on the other and a gaping, drooling mouth beneath the two). Where much of the Museum of Sex’s exhibits contain historical objects like early erotic film or common erotic imagery contextualized by placement and theoretical exposition, the work in “Fuck Art” — including that which plays with real-life eroticism — is blatantly artistic.

The museum handles this work much in the same way it does the non-artistic work of porn directors, burlesque dancers and the like — it places the work in context. The punning title of the exhibit both blasts (“Fuck art, let’s fuck!”) and claims (“Art, Fuck Art”) artistic quality, situating the work in both artistic (or private) and everyday (or public) spheres. They up this ante by introducing the idea of the show as an “occupation”, thereby prompting social change through erotic art.

“Fuck Art” isn’t pedantic, or even explanatory; the work — like a tent outside the capital — is simply there. The exhibit serves to remind us that in the matter of sexual freedom we must remain both critical and receptive.

“What do you think of that?” giggled one museum-goer, pointing to the six-foot-long, ejaculating graffiti penis.

“Doesn’t faze me,” replied the museum guard.