Giant Cats, Bickerton's Vixens, Pastel Collisions: Chelsea Art

June 22 (Bloomberg) -- Touring Chelsea galleries at the start of summer is hot, and not just because of the sweltering air. There's also the sexy art.

German painter Martin Eder redefines ``sex kitten'' in ``La Paix du Cul,'' his debut at Marianne Boesky Gallery and second solo show in New York. The 37-year-old, Berlin-based artist and musician (his stage name is Richard Ruin) poses naked women alongside outsized Persian and Siamese kittens.

In most of the works, the furry cats dwarf the bare-skin humans and appear, by virtue of their size, simultaneously sinister and sweet. The women -- who curl shyly on the ground, flaunt their pierced nipples and have arms growing out of their foreheads -- stare directly at the viewer. Stormy landscape backgrounds add to the Swiftian unease.

Eder, who has previously used porn magazines for inspiration, photographed models for these lavish, 94-by-70-inch works.

All paintings -- $55,000 to $65,000 -- have been sold, dealer Boesky said. The show runs through July 1 at 535 W. 22nd St.; (1)(212) 680-9889; http://www.marianneboeskygallery.com.

Bickerton at Sonnabend

Across the street at Sonnabend, Ashley Bickerton delivers social commentary via naked, pregnant, tattooed vixens with empty eye sockets and vampire fangs.

Bickerton, 47, who was born in Barbados and has lived in Bali since 1993, knows about island life -- as well as the commercialization of indigenous culture. These recent prints, hyperrealist paintings and photocollages on perforated wooden boards lay the blame on Western tourists and ``sexpats'' (expatriates involved in ``sexploitation''), depicted as red- faced brutes in Hawaiian shirts.

The show also displays several resin, plywood and aluminum boxes containing gears made in the 1980s. At the time, work like this -- called ``Neo-Geo'' or neo-geometric conceptualism -- was also being made by artists Jeff Koons and Peter Halley.

Most of the earlier works are on loan from private collections; only a few recent works remain unsold, the gallery said. Prices range from $28,000 to $100,000. The show runs through July 28 at 536 W. 22nd St.; (1)(212) 627-1018.

Scheibitz at Tanya Bonakdar

After Bickerton's Neo-Geo, head to Tanya Bonakdar Gallery where Dresden-trained, Berlin-based Thomas Scheibitz explores postmodern geometrics in a show titled ``View Over a Populated Valley.'' His new paintings and sculpture tiptoe between abstraction and vague representation -- and are totally sex- free.

Instead, you get sharp angles, interrupted curves, colliding rectangles and lovely passages of pastel color. Some shapes read as maps; others may be hills, mountain peaks or human silhouettes.

Scheibitz represented Germany in the 2005 Venice Biennale. He has work in the collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

All paintings at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery have been sold, mostly to private collectors, the gallery said. They were priced from 15,000 to 100,000 euros ($19,000-$127,000). All but one sculpture sold at prices ranging from 25,000 to 50,000 Euros ($32,000-$64,000).

The show runs through June 30 at 521 W. 21st St.; (1)(212) 414-4144; http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com.

(Katya Kazakina is a writer for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are her own.)

To contact the writer on this story: Katya Kazakina in New York at kkazakina@bloomberg.net.