To use or not to use? This question arises in the new series „Buttplugs“ (2023), created in collaboration between Patrick Alan Banfield and Mimi Kohler: large glazed clay sculptures that resemble butt plugs. The smooth, erotic form is subversively alienated by a decisive intervention: applied thorns and spikes.
 
Almost everyone has been pricked by a thorn at some point in their lives – a basic, universal experience of pain and nature. Patrick Alan Banfield and Mimi Kohler take this pain and transfer it metaphorically to another level of their art, intensifying the dilemma between sexual pleasure and pain or even death. The potential use of the butt plugs would only be possible once, if at all, and then with life-threatening consequences.
 
Faced with this choice, users and visitors are confronted with the inherent dilemma of freedom. Sartre, in particular, writes about the concept of the fear of freedom. The decision for or against (the use of) the butt plug confronts the individual with the terrible fear and at the same time with the irresistible fascination that comes from ultimate freedom – the freedom to make a choice that could radically change or even end one’s life.