Rub-A-Dub-Art: A Bathtime Collection

Good clean fun? P. J. O' Rourke once teased that "cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely." This collection sings to a similar tune. Taking the quotidian toilette and infusing it with a splash of the cinematic, the works in this collection transform personal grooming and bathing habits into petits récits of vulnerability, vanity, and voyeurism that are hardly squeaky clean.

Do Ho Suh's full-scale reproduction Doorknob/Bathroom suggests a tempting invitation to enter a room normally kept behind closed doors, with the cheeky caveat that the room itself has been displaced and is therefore inaccessible. Rebecca Graham's Bathtime With Clara and the Domesticated Alligator wryly twists the often banal act of bathing into a less-than-ordinary ritual shared with an unorthodox tub mate. Sasha Douglas and Andrea Blanch's intimate photographs offer peephole vignettes of otherwise solitary grooming regimens, to which Rebekka Guí°leifsdóttir lends an air of tongue-in-cheek playfulness coupled with a sense of impending peril. Nick Haymes and Kelli Vance tantalize with open-ended bathing episodes set within undisclosed larger predicaments, while Jen DeNike's diluted bloodbath leaves little room for anything but sinister connotations.