Sex, drugs and women under the influence

Richard Kern’s current exhibition of photographs at Feature Inc. on the Lower East Side features his usual subjects—which is to say nubile and nude girls-next-door (next door, that is, if you happen live in Williamsburg). Some of them pose—mostly undressed—while holding their favorite pharmaceuticals. Others are pictured from the waist up in double-exposed portraits, suggesting X-Ray Specs fantasies come to life. These latter images make it hard to say who’s suppose to be high, here, the viewer or the viewed, but regardless, the work as a whole upholds Kern’s rep as the art world’s Russ Meyer.