Auxier Kline is pleased to present 90’s Softcore, a solo show of new works on paper by the London and Helsinki based artist, Benjamin Murphy.

In 90s Softcore, Murphy turns his distinctive aesthetic toward the edgy, voyeuristic pulse of late–20th-century adolescence — a decade defined by the explosion of mass media, the introduction of the internet, and the fever dream of desire it provoked. Murphy’s works on paper are a love letter and an autopsy: a collage of pop-cultural iconography filtered through the smudged lens of nostalgia, guilt, and hormonal curiosity.

Here, Murphy resurrects the charged atmosphere of the 1990s — that hazy intersection where innocence met the flicker of television and computer screens. Catwoman slinks across the subconscious, Scream echoes from the bedroom TV, and Windows 98 opens like a portal into the first digital awakening. A pair of underwear, a glossy magazine cover, the grain of VHS static — each becomes an emblem of yearning, shame, and fascination, caught between the private and the performative.

At the heart of 90s Softcore lies the curious gaze: hungry, naïve, and unfiltered. Murphy confronts the ways in which sexuality was learned through images — through movies, ads, magazines, and pop stars — that were accessible in that era. The works reference the absurdity and tenderness of this formative confusion: GoldenEye’s pixelated violence, KISS’s theatrical lust, Monica Lewinsky’s stained dress — each symbol becomes a relic of desire mediated by spectacle.

Rendered with Murphy’s meticulous precision and characteristic use of line, these pieces oscillate between reverence and irony. They evoke a moment when everything felt both forbidden and televised, when a bedroom poster could be as potent as pornography, and when identity was shaped by the flicker of late-night cable and the hum of a modem.

In 90s Softcore, Murphy invites viewers to return to that era’s seductive awkwardness — to confront how images taught us to want, and how memory keeps that wanting alive.