Security firmly in place, Clinton Fein's latest exhibition, Torture, scheduled to open at Toomey Tourell Gallery in San Francisco on January 4, 2007, is a shocking and defiant exploration of America's approach to torture under the Bush administration.

A series of staged and digitally manipulated photographic images recreate infamous torture scenes from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, transforming diffuse, muted and low-resolution images into large-scale, vivid, powerful and frightening reproductions.

Fein focuses on the choreography and sexualization of torture, which includes images of prisoners, stripped naked, wearing hoods or sandbags as they're forced to stand in excruciatingly uncomfortable positions, simulate sexually degrading acts, and are subject to egregious humiliation. The horrifying images, stylized with fashion-photography lighting, radiate a profound beauty and eroticism that is all at once seductive, disturbing and unsettling.

Fein's deliberate rejection of blurring or obscuring the blatant nudity prevalent in the original Abu Ghraib images is consistent with his history of challenging notions of decency, which included a Supreme Court victory over United States Attorney General, Janet Reno.

"In undertaking the Torture series, Fein joins the artistic giants like Francesco Goya and Pablo Picasso who resorted to their artistic prowess to express the horrors of wars," said museum specialist and art consultant, Hanna Regev. "Fein channels his artistic reservoir of explosive energy into a high resolution digital camera to expose the dark side of the first 21st century war and its demoralizing and abhorrent effects."

Born in Johannesburg in 1964, Fein's work has achieved international recognition and his previous exhibitions in both San Francisco and New York have been fraught with controversy. Palo Alto printer, Zazzle, deliberately destroyed two Abu Ghraib-related prints prior to an exhibition, also at Toomey Tourell, in 2004.

"In a culture obsessed with violence, as indicative in Mel Gibson's recent movies such as the Passion of Christ and Apocalypto, Fein's Torture series, refashioned in an artistic rendition, warrants a second look," added Regev.