The name of this exhibition is “The 100 Most Influential Men in History,” and if that's all you know about it before you visit, you’ll be forgiven for expecting some reverential display à la TIME magazine. What you get though, is altogether different and more potent.

The stark white walls at StageBACK are tacked with large pencil drawings depicting what appears to be naked women in various poses. Further scrutiny reveals that each female figure has a male head, and each of these men is a famous historic figure. The artist behind these suprising drawings is Thomas Palme, a talented portraitist who works prolifically with nudes.

Welded atop grotesque, pornographic renderings of female bodies are political leaders, philosophers, writers, artists and fictional figures from ancient history to modern times. Some, like Silvio Berlusconi, have exaggerated breasts. Others, like Nietzsche, are reduced to a pudendum with little other detail. Many have the figure’s name transliterated in Chinese characters. Others also have German slang or vulgarities.

According to curator Susanne Junker, the exhibition critiques the ideology of lists: “At a time when information and celebrity is in surplus (and superfluous), we have adopted the practice of creating lists to make sense of the chaos.” Palme pinpoints the stupidity of compiling such rankings. By reducing great men to farce, the artist pokes fun at the belief that we have the power and foresight to determine the greatest of those among us.

Junker is keen to point out the necessity of using leaves to cover the more graphic segments of each image, as requested by the censors. Rather than resenting this obligation, she feels it speaks to the exhibition’s organic nature. Likewise, the removal of Chinese figures like Mao, Lao Zi and the Yellow Emperor poses little threat to the integrity of the overall display. The missing pieces are conspicuous in their absence, though, with gaps left where they ought to be.

This show says much about present-day ideologies, hero worship and the conflation of gender and sexuality. Brave, uncompromising and forceful, it is one of this winter’s most provocative shows.

DETAILS

What: “The 100 Most Influential Men in History”

Where: stageBACK

When: Now through Jan. 8

Web: www.stageback.org