VIENNA, (Reuters Life!) – A Vienna art gallery has  opened a nightly swingers club as part of a two-month project  aimed at provoking debate about scandal in art.

The club, housed in the cellar of The Secession art gallery  in central Vienna, offers visitors the chance to act out their  sexual fantasies in leather and latex and includes a dance  floor, body painting and an S&M chamber.

The club opens only after the main exhibits have shut but  curious visitors over 18 years of age can walk through the  empty, scarlet rooms with black sofas during the day.

Vienna Mayor Michael Haeupl said he did not approve of the  club, but noted that outraged politicians and newspapers were  playing into the artist’s hands.

“An artist’s goal is to provoke, and you are all playing  along with it,” he told a news conference.

The project is the work of Swiss artist Christoph Buechel,  who wanted to draw a parallel with the controversy over Gustav  Klimt’s “Beethoven Frieze” painting, a spokeswoman for the  gallery told the Austria Press Agency.

The Klimt painting, which hangs next to the swingers  exhibit, provoked uproar at the turn of the last century for the  way it depicted nude women. It cannot be viewed when the  swingers’ club is open.