Barry Isenor’s exhibition, XXX Video, consists of reconstructed booths for viewing pornography and/or engaging in sexual acts with or in view of other patrons – a combination of peep show and glory hole. In constructing the particular kind of architectural, sexual, and simultaneously private and public space that is porn watching in an out-of-home environment, Isenor raises significant questions about how art is experienced in the frame of the gallery.

The three adjacent viewing booths Isenor has exhibited are based on actual ones he visited in Manhattan. To the right of the booths are colour photographs of one of the original’s Formica interior, painted in bright yellows, reds and blacks. What would be expected to be a dingy space turns out to be an up-tempo, gaudy environment.

Unlike the colourfully painted originals, Isenor’s booths are straightforward, unpainted plywood constructions. Inset Plexiglas windows, both opaque and transparent, are installed on their sides, front and tops. Similar in intent to the originals but differing in design, see-through but bronze-tinted Plexiglas allows for a view of adjacent booths. (The originals have openable windows, most permanently stuck in the open position, through which patrons can among other things watch each other masturbate.) The fronts of the booth interiors where video screens would have been installed are instead covered with nearly opaque, orange Plexiglas. The same coloured Plexiglas forms the ceilings, and tints orange the gallery track lighting shining through the booths, thereby adding a sexual ambiance to the installation.

Isenor uses the basic form of the cubicle to critically analyze how architecture manipulates pleasure. The architectural space he reconstructs is, like its source, manipulative, as it is a predetermined outline for sexual activity. Isenor openly acknowledges this; the coercion into entering his booths by the promise of either pornography or art is explicit. However, divulging manipulation can actually free viewers from such constraints because, cognizant of the installation’s intrinsic assertiveness, they can ignore its beckoning. On the other hand, most architectural space designed for commercial purpose, sex or otherwise, employs manipulative strategies that are subdued or subliminal – raised temperatures in a bar, for instance, to increase patrons’ alcohol consumption. Further, commercial architecture often promotes social isolation through such manipulative strategies; a shopping mall, for instance, is designed for maximum private engagement with product, and any parts of it constructed for socializing – a bench or restaurant area, for example – are there to keep the individual shopper around consumer goods for as long as possible. Isenor’s installation differs vastly from this approach because it instead encourages the potential for social interactivity.

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