Cindy Sherman
14 September - 10 October 2012
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| © Cindy Sherman
Untitled (#547), 2010–12
Color photograph
64 1/2 x 90 1/2 inches (163.8 x 229.9 cm) |
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CINDY SHERMAN
14 September - 10 October 2012
Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present a series of recent landscape
format photographs by Cindy Sherman. This is her first exhibition with
the Paris gallery, following exhibitions in Los Angeles and Rome in
previous years.
Working exclusively as her own model for more than thirty years, Sherman
endlessly transforms herself to address the complexities of identity
through photographs that she controls as author, director, and stylist. A
consummate performer, she captures every possible manipulation of her
face and body on camera, coaxing the most nuanced expressions from her
supple features, and refining every structural detail, from fingernails
to props. Revealing myriad assumed identities, from fraught adolescent
to suburban housewife to Renaissance aristocrat to modern-day social
doyenne, Sherman continues to explore the inexhaustible range of social
guises and psychological spaces that women have claimed throughout
history.
In Sherman’s latest photographs, recondite female figures stand against
vast and inhospitable natural landscapes. Elaborately costumed, they
appear at odds with the backdrops of desolate plains, barren trees, and
otherworldly wintry terrains. The dynamic between each woman and her
alien setting varies; some hint at specific narratives, while in others
she appears to have landed quite by chance. In Untitled (#551), she
wears a heavily beaded full-length gold and cobalt dress, accented with a
high, regal collar. Her spare silk turban and bare face contrast with
the sumptuousness of her attire. Her clear blue, ever-watchful regard
and her hands lightly clasped in an expectant gesture beckon the viewer
to cross into the mossy riverbed at her back. In Untitled (#547), a
phantasmal sorceress hovers at the edge of a stormy seascape. Clad in a
long black gown and dramatically embellished bolero, she stares
vacantly, her sagging, age-worn face framed by long, flowing silver
locks. In Untitled (#552), she wears a severe black frock, white gloves
and matching ruffled lace collar. With her sharp russet bob and deep
scowl, she looks like a disapproving governess or scolding maid from a
bygone era. In each image, the female figure looms larger than the
surrounding natural world, in a reversal of the Romantic hierarchy.
For this series, Sherman shot the background landscapes on the isles of
Capri and Stromboli, in Iceland during the 2010 volcanic eruption, and
on Shelter Island, New York. Later she manipulated them digitally to
create lush and painterly effects, tweaking rocky seascapes and clouds
of volcanic ash to recall Barbizon landscapes or Turner's ambrosial
skies. Then she photographed herself in costume before a green screen in
the studio, leaving her face free of makeup, and digitally manipulating
it later. This series of photographs evolved from an editorial project
for Pop magazine, using clothes from the Chanel archives. The garments
range from 1920s haute couture designed by Coco herself to contemporary
creations by Karl Lagerfeld; the sumptuous, elegant apparel, with its
resplendent fabrics, feathers, ruffling, and beading creates a striking
contrast with the bleak intensity of the surrounding landscape. These
photographs draw explicit attention to the newly layered artifice of
Sherman’s technique, while embracing popular conventions and processes
in digital photography.
Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in New Jersey. She lives and works in New
York. Her work has been the subject of countless major international
exhibitions including "Cindy Sherman: Retrospective,” the Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago (1997, traveled to the Museum of Contemporary
Art, Los Angeles, Galerie Rudolfinum, Prague; Centro Cultural de Belém,
Lisbon; Musée d'art Contemporain de Bordeaux; Museum of Contemporary
Art, Sydney; and Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto through 2000); "Cindy
Sherman,” the Serpentine Gallery, London and the Scottish National
Gallery of Modern Art (2003), and "Cindy Sherman: A Retrospective,” Jeu
de Paume, Paris (2006, traveled to Kunsthaus Bregenz, Austria, Louisiana
Museum for Moderne Kunst, Denmark, and Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin
through 2007). A touring retrospective opened in February 2012 at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York and is currently on view at the San
Francisco Museum of Modern Art. It will travel to the Walker Art Center,
Minneapolis and the Dallas Museum of Art through June 2013.
www.gagosian.com
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