Nancy Grossman
22 May - 15 August 2011
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| © Nancy Grossman
Blunt, 1968
leather, wood, hardware, and porcelain
Courtesy of Michael Rosenfeld Gallery, LLC, New York, NY
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NANCY GROSSMAN
Heads
22 May - 15 August, 2011
MoMA PS1 presents Nancy Grossman: Heads, a solo exhibition that focuses
on the artist's evocative head sculptures. Nancy Grossman has been
making art for more than fifty years and is best known for her
leather-wrapped sculptures of heads, which the artist made from the late
1960s through to the 1980s. This exhibition brings together fourteen
sculptures, highlighting the formal and expressive range within the
series.
While Grossman regularly refers to the heads as self-portraits, they are
not made to resemble the artist herself. They speak to the malice and
subservience of both psychology and worldly conflict. Though the works
are often rendered blind and mute, they still allude to the role of the
silent witness amid cruelty and disorder. The creation of the sculptures
was inspired in part by the liberation movements of the late 1960s and
the Vietnam War, responding to the violence and social upheaval of the
era. Today, Grossman's heads continue to address the anxiety and turmoil
that weigh upon the individual and contemporary society. Each head
was carved from a block of wood and overlaid with sections of found
leather-often sourced from articles of clothing or even boxing
gloves-which are sewn, nailed, or zippered together. The life-size
sculptures are startling for what they obscure as much as for what they
expose. Eyes, ears, and mouths are typically covered, bound, sewn shut,
or otherwise restrained. Some heads incorporate found objects that
result in horns and other protrusions. The unsettling works have been a
source of inspiration for her fellow artists and those of younger
generations, and have been notably photographed by Robert Mapplethorpe
and Richard Avedon.
www.ps1.org
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