At NYC's Museum of Sex in Flatiron, "The Life Force" Pairs Eros and Mortality

The Museum of Sex in Flatiron is showing "The Life Force: Portraits from the Amparo & Manuel Foundation," a collaboration with Mexico City's Amparo & Manuel Foundation (AMMA). It brings a selection of large-scale figurative works from the foundation's collection to the United States for the first time. The show opened April 24 and runs through November.

The organizing idea is the tension Sigmund Freud described between Eros, the life instinct, and Thanatos, the death drive. The exhibition asks how intimacy responds to the fragility of life under pressure from aging, rupture, uncertainty and collective instability. Across painting, sculpture and drawing, figures appear in states of self-reflection and exposure. Nudity reads as vulnerability made visible, and cracks in bodies and surroundings hint at stress beneath a composed surface.

More than thirty artists are included, among them Tracey Emin, Lisa Yuskavage, Hernan Bas, Sarah Lucas, Bert Stern, David Shrigley, Katherine Bernhardt and Richard Dupont. Their work centers on portraiture, the body and psychological intensity.

The show was curated by Tam Gryn of the Museum of Sex. She describes the body as a space where Eros and Thanatos hold each other in tension, and says intimacy can act as resistance to decay. The exhibition treats sensuality as a kind of soft power. In moments of fracture, contact deepens, and sex becomes a way of holding on to life.

The museum is at 233 Fifth Avenue, at 27th Street. Tickets are sold through the museum's New York ticketing site, and last entry is two hours before closing. With the run ending in November, the coming weeks are the time to go.