Jimmy DeSana (November 12, 1949 – July 27, 1990) was an American artist, and a key figure in the East Village punk art and New Wave scene of the 1970s and 1980s.
[1] DeSana's photography has been described as "anti-art" in its approach to capturing images of the human body, in a manner ranging from "savagely explicit to purely symbolic".
[9][10] Writing in 1991, the art critic Brooks Adams described DeSana's 1979 publication, Submission, as "rather extraordinary," observing that it "did much to usher in the '80s genre of grotesque or blatantly fictive and often preposterously homoerotic, S&M photography.
"[13] The series included everyday items like balloons, flour, and aluminum foil dreamily lit in spectral hues.
[14] Numerous solo exhibitions followed, including ones in Wilkinson Gallery, London; Pat Hearn Gallery, New York; Galerie Jacques de Windt, Brussels and Museum of the Twentieth Century, Vienna, Austria[15] DeSana was featured in the 1981 P.S.1 exhibition New York/New Wave curated by Diego Cortez and included artists like Basquiat, Sarah Charlesworth, and Kenny Scharf.
Singer and writer Johanna Fateman wrote, "[DeSana] troubled suburban interiors with nude models in precarious poses, recasting everyday objects as BDSM props in his spare, elegant tableaux.
[21] In 2020, "The Sodomite Invasion: Experimentation, Politics and Sexuality in the work of Jimmy DeSana and Marlon T. Riggs" was shown at Griffin Arts Project in North Vancouver, British Columbia.
The retrospective showcased the pioneering, yet under-recognized, artist's New York City downtown art, music and film scenes during the 1970s and 1980s.