STSS

Small Town Sex Shop (2015) was a collaboration with Katherine Hubbard while in residence at Recess.  Perverting streamlined techniques of traditional garment-making determined by functionality and profit, Knoop and Hubbard scrambled logics of efficiency in favor of excess and pleasure.  The foundational garment in their collection was The Strap, referencing both sex toys and details from women’s garments, becoming a modular piece intended to be worn in combination with street clothes, pieces they made for the “collection”, or simply on their own.  The strap became a proposition: the mediator of boundaries and comfort as it bound the viewer’s body to the work.  Culminating in the opening of a “store”, visitors were invited to linger and socialize as they tried on the straps and samples in combination with other clothes.  Small Town Sex Shop made room for inventive moments and awkward intimacy in the face of New York’s reliance on privatization.