It’s been five years, but we finally shed the baby weight.

From corpulence to anorexia, in America it’s all spare tires and pierced navels.

The lean times encroach but expansion seems inevitable — manifest destiny. But still, that excess heft has got to come off. We’ve settled the west. We’ve made sprawl and malls.

Luther Vandross supposedly invented the Donutburger (two donuts for the bun!) They eased his pain in times of depression. A gluttonous stop on the upward trip of a never ending yo-yo diet.

Frank Benson once spoke of curating a show of artists’ juvenilia from their Schiele Period, that time when Egon Schiele’s emaciated, sexually provocative figures were the only things on their nubile minds.

Boom, bust, fat cat, jack sprat, so goes the waistline of the art world.

Nakedness, nudity, the Nude, body parts, flesh and flesh eaters populate this exhibition, some flaunting and others demure. Transparency, honesty, and forthrightness are all demonstrated here, but perhaps with a false promise, a come-on, a fantasy, a mirage.

Red sky at night, sailor’s delight. Red sky in the morning..sailor take warning.

PM DAWN – Frank Benson and Nancy deHoll, Xavier Cha, David Chieppo, Jennifer Cohen, Matt Johnson, Richard Kern, Anya Kielar, Scott Lenhardt, Adam Putnam, Max Schumann, A.L. Steiner