VEX ASHLEY in CONVERSATION with PENELOPE DARIO
PHOTOGRAPHY by PENELOPE DARIO
MOST PEOPLE OVERESTIMATE WHAT THEY CAN ACCOMPLISH IN ONE YEAR BUT UNDERESTIMATE WHAT THEY CAN ACHIEVE IN A DECADE.
This season, Petit Mort publishes its tenth issue in tandem with the 10th anniversary of our favorite art house porn company, A Four Chambered Heart, founded by creative mastermind Vex Ashley. From Beacon to Leeds, the mothers of these two media companies come together for a candid tête-à-tête about reaching milestones, the evolution of passion projects, and the balancing act between art and business.
PETIT MORT (PENELOPE DARIO)
Firstly, congrats on this major milestone! I’d love to start with a glimpse of where it all began, how Four Chambers came to be and how you reached where you are now.
VEX ASHLEY
Four Chambers started as an experiment. I was fresh out of art school, I was spending a lot of time on Tumblr. I was really immersed in the curation of images, the curation of themes, the curation of interests people were doing on that site that felt very personal and intimate. It was one of the only places on the internet where people were curating the art that they were interested in next to porn gifs that turned them on. It was really interesting, but the kind of porn that was being curated still felt like more of a functional product, it was still staying within quite narrow boundaries in how it looked. So I started thinking, what would it be like if I could give the same consideration to porn making aesthetically and conceptually that I was giving to my artwork? Could I apply that to films with sex?