Shimon Okshteyn: With Rembrandt, 2008

“Ukrainian-born, New York–based artist Shimon Okshteyn focuses on addiction, gluttony, carnal pleasures, and personal reckoning in “Dangerous Pleasures,” his second solo show at Stux gallery. The exhibition opens with Self Portrait, 2008, which positions a white life size cast of the nude, pot-bellied, and masturbating artist in front of a large black-and white painting, which appropriates a detail of the somber expression and craggy face of Rembrandt in his 1659 Self-Portrait…Many of Okshteyn’s works betray tongue-in-cheek mischievousness, but they are also poignant meditations on time, aging, and mortality.”
— Francine Koslow Miller, Artforum, Critics’ Pics

“Who says art is strictly for old fussies? It can be very frothy stuff, like this Shimon Okshteyn “fiberglass with marble dust” sculpture of a man jerking off his giant tool. I caught it on a high-minded jaunt to the Stefan Stux gallery the other night, so I gamely posed with it (captured by Brian Cummings), anxious to interact with a piece of art that’s THAT good. I even got to meet the artist, who admitted without prompting that he’s totally the basis for the sculpture. “Hmm, nice dick,” I remarked with my usual intellectual appreciation, slyly glancing downwards. He half smiled. And somehow the art world will never be the same.”
___Michael Musto, The Village Voice