Joker

A red, double-headed penis surrounds a face with hairy features and a pair of testicles as a body. This strange sight is flanked by an equally grotesque but self-effacing, miniature pencil-drawn figure captioned “Joker”, the work's title. His nose and tentacles look like a penis during orgasm, his mouth those of a vulva. 

In the 1980s Austrian artist Otto Muehl, breaking with his blasphemous performances in the Viennese Actionism movement, turned to figurative painting. Joker is a watercolour featuring the same sexual motifs as in the artist's early work minus the radicalism. He said he was driven by the “ joy of being alive and a bright outlook on the idea of life”.

Joker is being presented for the first time by the Pinault Collection during the “Untitled, 2020” exhibition at the Punta della Dogana in Venice in 2020.