Jack Siegel’s 13th Step

Of all the difficult-to-comprehend movie ratings, PG-13 is perhaps the hardest to pin down: you can push the boundaries and drop the F-bomb, but do it more than once and you risk an R; nudity is allowed, but only in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flash.

For his first solo exhibition, “Jack Siegel (PG-13),” at Half Gallery, 26-year-old New York-based artist Jack Siegel has paired seven simply colored photograms of constellations alongside an abstract cubist rendering of the tween-friendly film rating. “I think of it as a symbol for loss of innocence,” he said. “The intention isn’t the literal idea of going to a PG-13 rated movie, but what those movies tend to show—and don’t show—are images in real life that lead to coming of age.”

Siegel, a sometime Interview online contributor who had a collaborative show with artist Lucien Smith at Cooper Union in 2011 and was included in OHWOW’s “It Aint Fair 2012” group show in Miami Beach during Art Basel, says the aim of the show is to connect the dots between the vastness of star-gazing and the conformity of the MPAA Ratings Board.

“When you’re young, you think can design the world to be how you want it to be,” he said. “But in doing so, you find out you can’t.”

“JACK SIEGEL (PG-13)” RUNS JANUARY 9 – 31 AT HALF GALLERY, 208 FORSYTH STREET, NEW YORK.