Alex Kayser @ Photo Basel 2023 – Special Exhibition

Alex Kayser

Photo Basel 2023

13 – 18 June, 2023

ALEX KAYSER

The dance with Helen, 1974

ALEX KAYSER

Salvador Dali kranz

ALEX KAYSER

Canvas Meret Oppenheim, 1977

In collaboration with Galerie Esther Woerdehoff (Paris + Geneva) and the Alex Kayser Foundation, photo basel 2023 present the special exhibition "Alex Kayser".

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The Basel born photographer ALEX KAYSER (1949-2015) completed an apprenticeship in photography at Hugo Jäggi before moving to Essen in 1970 to study photography with Professor Otto Steinert at the Folkwang School. 

As he began his studies, Alex Kayser increasingly explored experimental photography and the related field of photographic sequences. 

While initially working in narrative black-and-white photographs, Alex Kayser changed his approach starting 1974 and began increasingly coloring his photographs by hand. From this point on, the interest in coloring continued throughout a variety of his work series. 

At the same time, Alex Kayser began to work with photography in a cross-media and performative way. A found plastic toy poodle named Zak supported him in these endeavors and is emblematic of the humorous approach of Alex Kayser's work.0

 In 1978 he relocated to New York, where he carried out his "Artists' Portraits" series over several years, the protagonists of which were always drawn from New York's artistic environment. 

Alex Kayser pursued this serial approach increasingly in the following years and can be seen in particular in the series "SX-cult", "Heads" and "Swiss Federal Councillors", which show the constantly repeating process of taking portraits of a thematic group.

Galerie Esther Woerdehoff

www.ewgalerie.com

Alex Kayser Foundation

www.alexkayserfoundation.org

PHOTO BASEL

Volkshaus Basel

Rebgasse 12, 4058 Basel

www.photo-basel.com

Pure Photography @ Photo Basel 2023 – 20th Century Floral Masterworks – Special Exhibition

Pure Photography

20th Century Floral Masterworks

Photo Basel 2023

13 – 18 June, 2023

Ansel Adams

«Leaves» (1942)

© Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust. 

All rights reserved

Don Worth

Agave victoriae reginae, 1975 

© Don Worth Photography Trust

All rights reserved

Wynn Bullock

Child in the Forest, 1951

© Wynn Bullock Photography LLC

All rights reserved

In cooperation with WBB GALLERY (Zurich), photo basel 2023 presents the curated special exhibition "Pure Photography. 20th Century Floral Masterworks" with photographs by Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Brett Weston, Edward Weston, Don Worth and other photographers. The works are from a Swiss private collection.

The term "Pure Photography" was shaped by the legendary Group f/64, which was active in the greater San Francisco area from 1932. The photographers of this grouping opposed the prevailing pictorialism, which attempted to bring the "artist's hand" into photographs through elaborate printing techniques and the manipulation of negatives and photographs, in order to establish the medium of photography as a fully-fledged means of artistic expression. The representatives of the Group f/64 wanted to free black-and-white photography from the pictorialist approach and manipulation. Their goal was authenticity and purity, as well as technical perfection in the darkroom. The creation of the finest grayscales and deep blacks led to a photographic language whose aesthetics often took on abstract features and made the smallest details visible. The pioneers of the time fundamentally changed the perception and understanding of photography. Their contribution inspired generations of photographers, even today, and led to photography as a medium being elevated to the status of art for the first time.

Photographers exhibited in «Pure Photography»: Imogen Cunningham (1883 – 1976) • Edward Weston (1886 – 1958) • Ansel Adams (1902 – 1984) • Wynn Bullock (1902 – 1975) • Willard Van Dyke (1906 – 1986) • Brett Weston (1911 – 1993) • Morley Baer (1916 – 1995) • Don Worth (1924 – 2009) • Paul Caponigro (*1932) • Bob Kolbrener (*1942) • Robert Mapplethrope (1946 – 1989) • Michael Miner (*1949) • John Sexton (*1953) • Roman Loranc (*1956)

PHOTO BASEL 2023

Volkshaus Basel

Rebgasse 12, 4058 Basel

www.photo-basel.com

Hélène Delprat, Grand Prix artistique 2023 de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca, Institut de France, Paris

HÉLÈNE DELPRAT

Grand Prix artistique 2023 de la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca, Institut de France, Paris

HÉLÈNE DELPRAT

Photographie © Valérie Sonnier

Créée en 1975 par Simone Del Duca en hommage à son mari, mécène et grand patron de presse, la Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca, est depuis 2005 abritée à l’Institut de France. Elle a pour but de faire rayonner, en France et à l’étranger, les arts, les lettres et les sciences. Elle intervient, par le moyen de grands Prix et de subventions attribués chaque année sur proposition des Académies de l’Institut de France (Académie française, Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres, Académie des beaux-arts, Académie des sciences, Académie des sciences morales et politiques).

La Fondation Simone et Cino Del Duca décerne chaque année sur proposition de l’Académie des beaux-arts un Grand Prix artistique qui récompense l’ensemble de la carrière d’un artiste de dimension internationale, alternativement dans les domaines de la peinture, sculpture et composition musicale. Ce prix est doté d’un montant de 100 000 euros.

Artiste hors-norme et donc inclassable, HÉLÈNE DELPRAT se définit avant tout comme peintre… Pourtant son travail touche à quantité d’autres domaines tout en révélant les questions de mémoire et d’identité: dessin, photographie, collages, performance, vidéo, sculpture, installation, mise-en-scène. Un bric-à-brac baroquisant et cohérent qui s’inspire de la littérature, du cinéma, de l’histoire et cite volontiers Pasolini, Louis XIV, Les Métamorphoses d’Ovide, ou Paul McCarthy. Après une formation aux Beaux-Arts de Paris, puis un séjour de deux ans à la Villa Médicis, Hélène Delprat occupe le devant de la scène artistique internationale dans les années 90-2000. Mais soudain elle quitte la galerie Maeght et décide de ne plus montrer son travail tout en continuant sa pratique. Après une quinzaine d’années de silence, elle entre à la galerie Christophe Gaillard.

« L’œuvre d’Hélène Delprat s’aborde par le détail, de près et c’est de là que naturellement nous nous plaçons pour l’observer, pour la visiter, afin de ne rien perdre du petit. La bonne distance, c’est à portée de la main, de là où elle est faite. L’aspect global du tableau viendra plus tard, à la fin, parce qu’il nous apparait secondaire, dépendant des caprices du détail. C’est l’intérieur qui nous occupe et ses petites scénettes incongrues dont les figurants proviennent indifféremment de la mythologie de la télé, de la bande dessinée, ou simplement de nulle part. Un jardin des délices où elle provoque les mariages improbables de Jérôme Bosch et Walt Disney. Elle est libre. » Philippe Garel, membre de l’Académie des beaux-arts. 

Parmi ses expositions personnelles récentes ou en cours, on peut citer : Souvenir des Batailles perdues, Musée Picasso (Barcelone, juin 2023), Twist&Die, Les Tanneries-Centre d’art contemporain (Amilly, 2023), Macbeth a raison, Galerie Duchamp (Yvetot, 2022), Conversation avec une table, Musée Marmottan-Monet (2022), I Hate My Paintings, galerie Christophe Gaillard (Paris, 2020), The Nautilus Room, Art Basel Unlimited (Bâle, 2021), With My Voice I’m Calling You, Kunsthalle Giessen (Giessen, 2020), To Sleep, to Die No More, galerie Carlier | Gebauer (Berlin, 2018), Hélène Delprat, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen (Caen, 2018), I Did It My Way, La Maison rouge (Paris, 2017).

Son travail a déjà été exposé, entre autres, au musée Gustave Moreau, au Jeu de Paume ou au Centre Pompidou, à Paris, pour le festival « Hors Pistes ». Elle a également participé à d’importantes expositions collectives telles que : Picasso et l’exil, Abattoirs (Toulouse 2018), UNTITLED, 2020. Trois regards sur l’art aujourd’hui, exposition de la Pinault Collection à la Punta della Dogana (Venise, 2020), PAYSAGES, Pinault Collection au siège de Kering à l’ancien hôpital Laennec (Paris, 2021), Napoléon ? Encore !, Musée de l’Armée (Paris, 2021), Des corps, des écritures, Musée d’Art Moderne (Paris, 2022). En 2021, Hélène Delprat a été invitée à la Manufacture de Sèvres pour une carte blanche afin d’y concevoir des céramiques uniques. Une monographie intitulée Les Travaux & les Jours a été publiée par les Éditions Dilecta.

Hélène Delprat est aujourd’hui cheffe d’atelier à l’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Elle est représentée par la Galerie Christophe et Nathalie Gaillard/ Paris et Bruxelles ainsi que par la Galerie Carlier Gebauer Berlin.

Membres du jury : Jean-Marc Bustamante, Hervé Di Rosa, Philippe Garel, Gérard Garouste, Fabrice Hyber, Yves Millecamps, Ernest Pignon-Ernest, membres de la section de peinture de l’Académie des beaux-arts.

INSTITUT DE FRANCE

23 quai de Conti, 75006 Paris

institutdefrance.fr

Jan-Henri Booyens @ Simchowitz Gallery, Los Angeles - Deflector Ray

Jan-Henri Booyens: Deflector Ray

Simchowitz, Los Angeles

May 25 – June 24, 2023

Simchowitz presents Deflector Ray, the first solo show of the South African artist Jan-Henri Booyens (b.1980) in Los Angeles. The title comes from Star Trek, suggesting an inherent contradiction—a type of force field that can be used to absorb and protect, while at the same time, shooting outward to destroy and kill. It’s a fitting notion for an artist whose practice can be defined by contrast, discord and the unexpected.

Based in Cape Town, Jan-Henri Booyens’ medium-to-large scale paintings have often drawn comparisons to the work of early-to-late Modernists, not only because of his interest in Surrealist automatism, but because they exemplify the sometimes brutal, sometimes lyrical side of action painting—with odd collisions of materials, tonalites and movements. Indeed, his work is nothing if not a celebration of the spontaneous, full of charge and flow.

But in truth, his practice is clearly the product of contemporary times. Hip-Hop, street culture, digital technologies and African Afrocentrism are all cogent factors in his aesthetic, as well as the constant inspiration he gets from outright experimentation. One can hear a faint echo of Italian Futurism who famously considered industrial life a thing of beauty, where car engines, machines, telephones and electricity provided an ongoing symphony. The parallel today, at least for Jan-Henri Booyens, is the celebration of glitches, application errors, system crashes, data moshing and the like. “I’m really interested in the error,” he says, “the beauty of the error, and the beauty of the mistake. Those are really important to me.”

To that end, Jan-Henri Booyens has been “destroying images” as he says, for the past 15 years. He might, for example, pull an image from the web and then feed it into a program that allows him to transform it into code or sound. (A jpeg might be translated into ASCII for example, or WAV). Then, after cutting and pasting, editing and deleting, he exports it back out as an image file (jpeg or gif) to create strange, colorful abstractions that are full of glitches and corrupted pixels. Few if any, serve as models for paintings, but rather inspirations. They’re “successful failures,” he explains. “Or maybe a kind of psychic autism—a release that somehow gets fucked up in the process of being made.”

Similarly, he invites chance collisions to occur during the process of painting. He generally works with unprimed canvas, because, as he says, he enjoys the ways in which different pigments absorb into the surface at different rates and transparency. He will also mix oil paint with different types of spray paint, or add cold wax to build up the surface, which he may or may not scrape away. He will also weave in brush strokes, hard-edged lines, and calligraphic marks. He has even turned to reflective elements, such as glitter or metallic dust, which have never been popular with most artists. But such collisions often coalesce into something more lyrical and rhythmic, something that keeps us looking over and over. Lisa Le Feuvre’s exploration of failure seems fitting here, “We can sometimes only become truly attentive,” she writes, “when something is indeed wrong.”

Likewise, he enjoys throwing people off track with his titles as well, which often suggest specific intentions or inspirations (“Cy Twombly Broke My Heart” or “Joseph Beuys Was a Liar”). But as Jan-Henri Booyens says, they only come after the work is completed, or perhaps, while they’re being made. Some might riff on a random song lyric or nursey rhyme, while others might play with common street slang. (“Onder in die Vlei, Het Hy Haar Siektes” translates from Afrikaans to Down in the valley he gets all of her diseases and “Hos …. Indota!” translates from Sabela, a language developed in prison, to something like ‘hello… your highness,’ but ‘your highness’, or indota, means ‘a person with a high ranking’, where the higher the prison sentence, the higher the ranking)

If Africa plays a role in his work, Jan-Henri Booyens admits to being aware of his country’s well documented contribution to the birth of European abstraction in the 1920s, but as he confesses, he also had to reconcile his relationship to his country’s long tradition of politicizing artworks. “I turned to abstraction partly as a reaction to all that,” he recalls. “I’ve always been against narrative art and more interested in works that are more open-ended.”

Nevertheless, South Africa has in fact inspired a few epiphanies. One for example happened during what is known as “loadshedding,” which is a practice of widespread blackouts conducted by Eskom, the country’s main energy company, to avoid the collapse of the grid. That meant the lights would go off every three hours, which eventually inspired Jan-Henri Booyens, out of frustration, to work with glow-in-the-dark paint. “Now I really like the idea that a collector might have a work in his or her home, and at some point, after they turn off the lights, they discover that they have an entirely different painting.”

Born in Johannesburg in 1980, Jan-Henri Booyens lives and works in Cape Town. He studied at the Durban Institute of Technology and the Gerrit Rietveld Academie voor Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam, and has taught in the Visual Arts Department at the University of Stellenbosch. Booyens was one- third of the infamous artist collective Avant Car Guard and his work is part of numerous collections, including the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris. His solo exhibitions include ‘WHITEOUT’ (2015) at Blank Projects and ‘Some Kind of Nature’ (2014). “Deflector Ray” is his first solo show in the U.S.

Jan-Henri Booyens’ work is often described in terms of a struggle between the representational and abstract, the rational and chaotic. His affinity and critical engagement with Modernism is coupled with his relationship to the South African landscape, both physical and social, manifesting in an intuitive, texture-rich layering of oil paint on canvas and a bold use of colour andline. Booyens incorporates his experimentation with street art, photography, and digital ‘Glitch Art’ and GIFs into his canvasses, as seen in his solo presentations at blank projects, ‘WHITEOUT’ (2015) and ‘Some Kind of Nature’ (2014). He was one-third of the iartist collective Avant Car Guard, who employed paint, photography and sculpture to offer a satirical critique of South Africa’s art world.

SIMCHOWITZ DTLA

727 East Washington Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90021

www.simchowitz.com

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Artist JR Exhibition @ Pace Gallery, Geneva - Women

JR: Women

Pace Gallery, Geneva

25 May – 18 July, 2023

JR 

28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes

Action dans la Favela Morro da Providência,

 Escalier, close-up, Rio de Janeiro, Brésil, 2008

Color print, mounted on dibond, mat plexiglas, 

flushed wooden black frame, 188 × 124.5 × 7.6 cm 

© JR

Pace Gallery presents JR: Women, a solo exhibition of work by the internationally renowned French artist. Marking the artist’s first show in Switzerland since 2008, JR presents a suite of artworks from his Women Are Heroes project. This exhibition follows the release of his latest encyclopaedic book, Artist Until I Find a Real Job, published in April 2023.

Known for his large-scale, outdoor photographic installations, JR’s practice is rooted in an exploration of identity, community, and social justice. His work is typified by monumental installations that transform urban settings and tackle cultural and socio-political issues. Through his portraits, JR brings individual experiences and stories to the broadest possible audience.

JR: Women showcases the Women Are Heroes project that the artist began in 2008 in Sierra Leone, before taking the project to Liberia, Kenya, Cambodia, India, Brazil, and France. Travelling through zones of conflict, JR found that women are commonly the primary victims of war, brutality, and political or religious fanaticism. In 28 Millimètres, Women are Heroes, Rispah Atemba, Sierra Leone (2008), JR intimately captures the image of a smiling woman resting her head on her hands. Her disposition is jubilant and full of energy despite the political upheavals in Sierra Leone, which was in a state of recovery following the end of a civil war. JR displayed her portrait, and those of other women, on the side of trucks, buildings, and temporary structures as an act of resistance and hope. In placing the lives of local women on centre stage, JR’s work provides a space for them to freely express themselves however they chose.

In other works, such as 28 Millimètres, Women are Heroes, Action Dans La Favela Morro da Providência, Escalier, Close-Up, Rio de Janeiro, Bresil (2008) or 28 Millimètres, Women Are Heroes, Exhibition In Paris, Femme Allongée - Delivery In Paris, Under The Sun, France (2010), JR pastes his portraits of women in public spaces, bringing their individual stories into the public arena. In doing so, JR removes the boundary between everyday life and art galleries, bringing his work directly to the communities featured in the work. In Brazil, he pasted the image onto a stairway in the favela of Morro da Providência, to be seen from street level. Widely considered to be the first favela community in Brazil, JR connects this woman – as well as the others in the series – with her local community, demonstrating their abiding strength.

JR’s practice underlines the crucial role that women play in society and highlights their dignity. Through an expressive and hopeful lens, the artworks celebrate the women’s heroism living through hardship. With an egalitarian approach to artmaking and an emphasis on collaboration, JR was often assisted by people from the neighbourhoods in installing and pasting the photographs. Stressing the collaborative nature of his work, at the end of each project, a book was made and distributed to those who participated. Despite differing countries and stories, the women in the portraits shown in JR: Women are displayed in conversation with one another, united in their fortitude.

JR’s (b. 1983, Paris) communal and collaborative practice promotes civic discourse across the globe through large-scale photographic interventions and digitally collaged murals. JR uses photographs, murals, films, videos, and other multimedia works to address socio-economic and political issues. His work—which he refers to as “infiltrating art,” a term descriptive of its ubiquity and ability to reach an audience beyond those who visit museums—has been installed across the globe, from the streets of Paris to the favelas of Brazil and the border between the United States and Mexico.

Begun in 2011, his Inside Out project has allowed over 260,000 people worldwide to obtain photographic portraits that JR’s team prints as large black-and-white posters. He encourages participants to paste them up in common spaces, adding their images to the public sphere. JR has directed short films including Les Bosquets (2015) and ELLIS (2015), as well as the feature documentary Faces Places (2017), co-directed with Agnès Varda and nominated for an Academy Award. In 2018, JR collaborated with TIME magazine on The Gun Chronicles: A Story of America, creating a magazine cover, video mural, and interactive website which included an exhibition at Pace Gallery in October of 2018. In 2022, JR and TIME magazine worked together again to create the Resilience of Ukraine cover, which captured the unfurling of a 148ft photograph in Lviv, Ukraine of Valeriia, a five-year-old Ukrainian refugee who has become a symbol of hope during the war. 

PACE GALLERY GENEVA

Quai des Bergues, 15-17, Geneva

www.pacegallery.com

Exposition-Festival Utopi·e 2023 @ Magasins Généraux, Pantin

Exposition-Festival Utopi·e 2023

Magasins Généraux, Pantin

24 - 28 mai, 2023 

Elijah Ndoumbe

Let’s Look, Together, 2021

© Elijah Ndoumbe

Maïc Baxane

Pisseur·se 4, 2022

© Maïc Baxane

Nelson Bourrec Carter

Strange Bedfellows, 2023

© Nelson Bourrec Carter

Kianuë Tran Kiêu

Siffler la Nuit, 2022

© Kianuë Tran Kiêu. 

Photo © Sara Kheladi

Après avoir accueilli la première édition en mai 2022, les Magasins Généraux reçoivent la deuxième édition d’Utopi·e, prix artistique d’un nouveau genre dédié aux artistes LGBTQIA+. Cette semaine d’exposition et de festival vise à encourager et à visibiliser la scène artistique queer, et à faire appel à une approche de l’art attentive aux différences, engagée, diversifiée et inclusive.

Chaque année, Utopi·e organise un appel à candidatures destiné aux artistes LGBTQIA+ dont les pratiques artistiques explorent – autant dans le discours que dans la forme – leurs identités mouvantes, illustrent leurs rêves et leurs inspirations, sensibilisent aux discriminations sexuelles et de genre, bousculent les modèles hétéronormatifs et cisgenres, et surtout rejettent les injonctions à rentrer dans des cases.

Pour cette édition, le public est invité à découvrir le travail de 10 artistes sélectionné·e·x·s par un comité pluridisciplinaire et transgénérationnel, et à prendre part à une programmation mêlant conversations, ateliers, lectures, performances et DJ sets.

En plus de l’exposition de leur travail aux Magasins Généraux, les artistes lauréat·e·x·s ont accès en 2023 à :

• Une dotation financière de 1000 €

• Un cycle d’expositions en galerie pendant l’hiver 2023/2024 avec les galeries Balice Hertling, Praz Delavallade et sans titre à Paris

• Une résidence de deux semaines à la Maison Artagon dans le Loiret

• Une soirée de programmation à la galerie that’s what x said à Bruxelles

Les membres du comité de sélection de cette édition :

• Julie Crenn, docteure en histoire de l’art, critique d’art (AICA) et commissaire d’exposition indépendante

• Camille Kingué, membre de Contemporaines

• Clément Postec, conseiller artistique, commissaire d’exposition et cinéaste

• Adeline Rapon, artiste et photographe

• Emilie Renard, directrice de Bétonsalon

• H·Alix Sanyas (Mourrier), artiste et membre de la collective Bye Bye Binary et lauréat·e de la 1ère édition d’Utopi·e

" Les oeuvres des dix artistes exposé·e·x·s ont toutes comme point de départ des éléments biographiques, qu’il s’agisse de lutte, de témoignage, de revendication ou encore de rituel, elles nous offrent à voir une intimité. Chaque oeuvre nous plonge dans le vécu de l’artiste, nous fait découvrir son histoire mais aussi une partie de celle de la communauté LGBTQIA+. Cette exposition propose une cartographie de l’appartenance queer, résistante et poreuse " soulignent les deux co-fondatrices de l'événement, Myriama Idir et Agathe Pinet.

LES ARTISTES DE LA 2E ÉDITION

MAÏC BAXANE

NÉ·E EN 1984

Portrait de Maïc Baxane

Photo © Lucile Boiron

Maïc Baxane dessine et produit ses affiches- images sous forme de multiples aux couleurs franches, de visuels jouissifs qui placent les corps en leur coeur, bousculent et redéfinissent les représentations qui nous entourent, esquissant d’autres mythologies. Impliqué·e et partie prenante des communautés queer, son travail de design graphique et d’illustration participe à la création de messages et de signes pour nos luttes, nos revendications, nos imaginaires. C’est depuis une subjectivité queer et féministe aussi, qu’ell·e travaille l’autoportrait, outil d’exploration à de multiples fins.

NELSON BOURREC CARTER

NÉ EN 1988

Portrait de Nelson Bourrec Carter

Photo © Nelson Bourrec Carter

Nelson Bourrec Carter est un artiste et réalisateur franco-américain. Sa pratique qui lie film, photographie et installation, s’articule autour des liens tissés entre territoires fictionnés et paysages réels, et les questionnements identitaires qui leurs sont inhérents. Ses tropismes sont ceux de ses origines familiales, françaises et afro-américaines, de son identité queer, ainsi que des narrations qui ont forgé son regard sur cette triple culture. Ses images sont empreintes des grandes mythologies américaines, autant documentaires qu’hollywoodiennes, et chacune de ses pièces s’appuie sur ces ressources autant qu’elle en interroge la structure. Ses films ont été montrés dans des festivals tels qu’Entrevues Belfort ou Vila do Conde au Portugal, à la Cinémathèque française, mais également dans des centres d’arts comme le MAC VAL (Vitry-sur-Seine), le Jeu de Paume (Paris) ou le MoMA (New York).

AËLA MAÏ CABEL

NÉ·E EN 1995

Portrait d’Aëla Maï Cabel

Photo © Oriane Robaldo

Aëla Maï Cabel fonde sa pratique sur l’échange des savoir-faire et savoirs, travaillant notamment la céramique, la performance, l’édition, les ateliers de partage, la cueillette et le glanage. Son travail se compose d’un ensemble de pièces se présentant sous la forme d’installations. Si ce terme générique vient préciser des postures historiques dans l’histoire de l’art, iel se connecte ici tant aux savoirs ancestraux qu’aux économies du partage, lui donnant la possibilité ouverte (ou offerte) de faire advenir, à présent, un futur.

Iel nous invite à nous relier à des forces, celles de la nature ou de la cosmogonie, de travailler de plus près les notions d’autonomie et d’autogestion, de questionner les féminismes comme pensée écosophique et enfin d’aborder toutes matières (argile, textile, teinture, laine, bois) comme la zone sensible d’un territoire de rencontres, de trouvailles et d’enchantement.

AUDREY COUPPÉ DE KERMADEC

NÉ·E EN 1992

Portrait d’Audrey Couppé de Kermadec

Photo © Nanténé Traoré

Audrey Couppé de Kermadec est un·e journaliste, un·e écrivain·e, un·e artiste visuel·le et performeur·euse non-binaire et afrodecendant·e. Son travail explore des sujets allant des traumatismes de l’enfance à la santé mentale, en passant par les normes de genre et l’expérience d’être une personne noire touchée par le sexisme. Originaire de Guadeloupe et de Martinique, l’artiste antillais·e utilise son art comme un acte d’amour de soi et un lieu sûr pour montrer sa vulnérabilité. Ses oeuvres se veulent hybrides et mêlent du dessin digital, des textes personnels, des photographies argentiques et des pistes sonores oniriques pour tisser des collages intimes et politiques.

Extrait de biographie écrite par Claire Laporte, Centre d’art Ultra association

NAELLE DARIYA

NÉE EN 1987

Portrait de Naëlle Dariya

Photo © SMITH

Naelle Dariya est autrice, performeuse et comédienne. Après des études de lettres, elle suit une formation intensive à l’École du jeu et travaille régulièrement sous la direction d’Alexis Langlois, Paul B. Preciado et Yann Gonzalez dans des films résolument queers. Son expérience de vie est souvent motrice dans son processus d’écriture de récits d’autofictions. Ses créations, qui sont des critiques acerbes du cistème, abordent les thématiques de la reproduction sociale et de l’intersectionnalité. Elle use d’un humour incisif, où personne n’est épargné·e. Parallèlement, aux côtés de son ami river, cinéaste et militant, iels ont fondé le collectif SHEMALE TROUBLE qui promeut les cultures trans et queers dans le milieu de la nuit.

SIDO LANSARI

NÉ EN 1988

Portrait de Sido Lansari

Photo © Sido Lansari

Sido Lansari est un artiste pluridisciplinaire. Il est né et a grandi à Casablanca, au Maroc. Il a travaillé à la Biennale de la danse et la Biennale d’art contemporain de Lyon pendant ses études de communication culturelle. En 2014, il s’installe à Tanger et rejoint l’aventure de la Cinémathèque de Tanger dont il en est le directeur jusqu’en septembre 2022. Actuellement en post-diplôme art à l’École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Lyon, il y développe un projet sur l’Ahzem, premier mouvement queer maghrébin en France. Sa pratique artistique s’articule autour de questions liées à l’identité, au genre et aux sexualités en explorant les angles morts de la mémoire, du point de vue de l’héritage linguistique, artisanal ou archivistique. À travers des médiums comme la broderie, la photographie et la vidéo, il interroge un récit collectif pour construire une réflexion et une mémoire individuelles.

En 2018, il est artiste résident à la Friche la Belle de Mai à Marseille. Il y développe Les Derniers paradis, son premier court-métrage, Grand Prix 2019 du Festival Chéries-Chéris à Paris. Il crée divine en 2020, fanzine participatif et pluridisciplinaire en ligne, qui favorise la contribution d’artistes d’univers multiples en leur offrant un espace d’expérimentation de la pratique artistique domestique dans un contexte de pandémie. Son travail a notamment été exposé en 2022 et 2023 à l’Institut du monde arabe dans le cadre de l’exposition « Habibi, les révolutions de l’amour ».

ELIJAH NDOUMBE

NÉ·E EN 1994

Portrait d’Elijah Ndoumbe

Photo © Muhammad Salah

Elijah Ndoumbe est artiste multimédia, tisseur·se de rêves et vit entre Paris-Marseille, Los Angeles et Dakar. Ses oeuvres, à la fois objets plastiques, photographiques, filmiques sont une mosaïque de récits, poétiques, sensoriels et empruntés à la réalité des trans de Turtle Island (USA), d’Afrique du Sud, et d’Ouest, elles sont un plaidoyer pour une justice et une liberté des genres.

Elijah Ndoumbe a été artiste en résidence à Black Rock Sénégal, artiste invité·e à la Biennale de Dakar - DAK’ART 2022 dans l’exposition collective « Black 40 Rock » organisée par Kehinde Wiley et aux Rencontres de Bamako - Biennale africaine de la photographie (2022- 2023) Iel fait partie du programme CPH:LAB (2022-2023). Iel développe actuellement un projet avec des artistes entre la France, le Sénégal et les États-Unis.

NO ANGER

NÉE EN 1990

Portrait de No Anger

Photo © Arsène Marquis

Chercheuse et artiste, No Anger tient le blog À mon geste défendant. En 2019, elle a obtenu un doctorat en science politique. Elle participe aux luttes féministes, queer et antivalidistes. Souhaitant exprimer la puissance de son corps loin des assignations validistes qu’elle subit au quotidien, No Anger se crée une nouvelle peau, par la danse et l’écriture. Son travail suit donc ces deux axes qui se mêlent parfois dans ses performances : elle écrit des textes qui accompagnent la danse, la complètent. Elle croit beaucoup en la possibilité de réinventer artistiquement son corps et sa sexualité.

JORDAN ROGER

NÉ EN 1996

Portrait de Jordan Roger

Photo © Agathe Flamant

Jordan Roger est diplômé de l’Ensa de Bourges en 2021. Il a volontairement barré son nom de famille à la suite de l’excommunication familiale qu’il a subi il y a quelques années par les témoins de Jéhovah. Dès lors, il voue un culte à sa propre colère. Ses oeuvres, toujours militantes, se dressent en réaction à l’hétéropatriarcat, aux inégalités de classes et questionnent plus généralement la religion, ses amours, ses icônes et la famille.

L’artiste utilise des codes connus de tous·tes pour les détourner de leur statut originellement conçu. Ses doigts d’honneurs se matérialisent dans un travail pluridisciplinaire qui se nourrit d’un champ lexical gay. Un château de princesses en flammes, une chorale de sirènes, une fausse page Wikipedia en céramique, un travesti dans une robe de mariée. Des doigts d’honneurs couleurs pastels recouverts de paillettes et affublés de phrases chocs espérant pouvoir endoctriner le plus de brebis possible.

KIANUË TRAN KIÊU

NÉ·E EN 1989

Portrait de Kianuë Tran Kiêu

Photo © Helio Pu

Kianuë Tran Kiêu est un·e artiste asiofuturiste non- binaire et transdisciplinaire. Son travail est traversé par trois grandes notions : le sanctuaire émotif, le mysticisme résilient et les luttes queer et antiracistes. Ses oeuvres se matérialisent dans un univers poétique et onirique, inspiré de ses imaginaires de repli. Elles soulignent l’importance de faire mémoire collective, de réclamer son héritage queer et d’être moteur de sa narration. L’artiste réfléchit la libération des corps queer et racisé·e·x·s de tout contrôle, la réappropriation d’une spiritualité trans décolonisée comme rite de résilience, ainsi que la sensibilité comme puissance de révolte, de résistance et d’autodétermination politique.

C’EST QUOI UTOPI·E ?

Soirée d’ouverture de la 1e édition d’Utopi·e

aux Magasins Généraux, 2022

Photo © Pierre-Ulysse Gorzkowski

Utopi·e est une association d’intérêt général qui agit en faveur de l’égalité des genres dans les arts visuels et vivants. Utopi·e souhaite visibiliser et défendre des artistes LGBTQIA+ engagé·e·x·s qui portent à travers leur travail des valeurs d’inclusion, de témoignages et de respect de la différence, et qui s’emparent des enjeux sociétaux. Par-delà la nécessité de soutenir les créations LGBTQIA+, Utopi·e est un appel à explorer d’autres champs dans la création actuelle.

Pour cela, Utopi·e met en place des rendez-vous où s’invitent des programmations artistiques et culturelles avec expositions, conférences, lectures, performances et fêtes. De cette manière, Utopi·e souhaite mettre en avant les voix LGBTQIA+ nouvelles et établies.

LES CO-FONDATRICES

Portrait de Myriama Idir et Agathe Pinet

Photo © Jeanne Lucas

Animées par une vision commune et engagée de participer à l’émancipation de schémas prédéfinis dans le monde de l’art, Agathe Pinet et Myriama Idir forment un duo complice et complémentaire.

Ayant suivi le même cursus en marché de l’art, elles s’entendent sur les sujets de résistance politique sociale et identitaire qui modifient les polarités du monde de l’art. Ce dialogue les amène à se questionner sur les relations et les rapports entretenus par les différents acteur·rice·x·s de ce secteur et à s’intéresser à la collaboration comme mode de production de projets.

Deux itinéraires différents qui combinent des expériences transdisciplinaires, et qui s’inscrivent avec les artistes, les chercheur·euse·x·s, curateur·ice·x·s dans une perspective de changement pour un art actuel plus fluide et essentiel au sein de notre société.

Site internet : prixutopie.com

Instagram : @prixutopie

Informations pratiques :

Soirée d’ouverture : mardi 23 mai de 18h à 23h

Exposition–festival du 24 au 28 mai 2023

Du mercredi au samedi de 14h à 19h,

le dimanche de 14h à 22h

Entrée libre & gratuite

MAGASINS GENERAUX

1 rue de l'Ancien Canal, 93500 Pantin

Toute la programmation est à retrouver sur magasinsgeneraux.com

This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture @ MCNY - Museum of the City of New York

This Is New York 

100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture

Museum of the City of New York

Opens to the public Friday, May 26, 2023

Richard Estes 

M Train on Route to Manhattan Approaches the Williamsburg Bridge. 1995 

Copyright Richard Estes, Courtesy of Louis K. Meisel Gallery

Berenice Abbott 

Tempo of the City I. 1938

Museum of the City of New York 

Museum Purchase with funds from the 

Mrs. Elon Hooker Acquisition Fund, 1940. 40.140.249

Beautiful or menacing…opulent or awful…lively or lonely…fun or frightening…inspiring or irritating…New York City has been a muse for myriad artists over the last 100 years. In celebration of its Centennial, the Museum of the City of New York presents This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture, an interactive and sweeping exhibition examining what NYC has meant to people, including artists, writers, and other creators who have been inspired by the city. The exhibition features more than 400 objects across visual art, television and film, music, theater, literature, and fashion; a digital bookshelf interactive voiced by celebrities such as Matthew Broderick, Rosario Dawson, Lea DeLaria, Tessa Thompson, and more; as well as a must-see immersive film experience highlighting the sights, sounds, and significance of the city in cinema. 

“Around the world, billions of people have an idea of what New York City is because they have learned about the city through movies, television, music, literature, photography, and more. The city is an object of perpetual fascination that is interpreted and reinterpreted and continues to inspire creators across different genres,” says Sarah M. Henry, the Robert A. and Elizabeth Rohn Jeffe Chief Curator and Interim Director of the Museum of the City of New York. “In honor of the Museum of the City of New York’s centennial – and to underscore our role as NYC’s storyteller—we’re thrilled to present This Is New York, an exciting new exhibition celebrating the city's vibrant art and pop culture scene over the past century and showcasing works from artists, musicians, and other creators who have helped define the city's cultural identity.”

The exhibition, which takes over MCNY’s entire third floor, features several key sections:

• TEMPO OF THE CITY, which looks at how artists have captured various aspects of joy and struggles evident on the streets of NYC. Some key objects and elements in this section include:

o Berenice Abbott’s Tempo of the City, a black and white photograph from 1938 capturing New Yorkers as they rush around, utterly absorbed in their own daily lives;

o Jimi Hendrix’s handwritten notebook, which includes lyrics for the legendary guitarist’s song, Electric Ladyland (courtesy of the Museum of Pop Culture);

o Homage to the People of the Bronx: Double Dutch at Kelly Street—La Freeda, Jevette, Towana, Staice, a relief sculpture by John Ahearn and Rigoberto Torres that expresses the joy and expertise of Double Dutch jump rope (on loan from The Broad Art Foundation);

o Taxi Driver storyboards, hand-drawn by the classic film’s director, Martin Scorsese, on loan from the Academy Award-winner’s private collection; 

o Martin Wong’s Desire – a series of paintings in gilded frames, depicting brick walls – the artist’s interpretations of his “blighted” East Village neighborhood of the 1980s (from the collection of KAWS); and

o Carrie Bradshaw’s tutu ensemble from the pilot of Sex and the City, designed by Patricia Field, underscoring the idea of the city as a playground and runway (on loan from North Center Productions).

o Also in this section, Songs of NY, a specially created interactive map featuring music inspired by the city’s streets and subways, with songs representing all five boroughs. Visitors will step into the installation to learn the history of and hear snippets from more than 100 songs, from the 1920s to the 2020s, including Jennifer Lopez’s Jenny from the Block (Bronx) and The Mills Brothers’ Coney Island Washboard (Brooklyn) to The Ramones’ Rockaway Beach (Queens), Wu-Tang Clan’s C.R.E.A.M. (Staten Island) and Ella Fitzgerald’s Drop Me Off in Harlem (Manhattan).

Salman Toor 

Bar Boy, 2019 

© Salman Toor; Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York 

Photo: Farzad Owrang. Courtesy of The Whitney Museum of Art

• DESTINATION NYC highlights how artists have represented the places where New Yorkers spend their free time: from iconic, commercial entertainment districts like Times Square and the city’s countless drinking, dining, and dancing spots, to the thousands of public parks, beaches, and private corners where New Yorkers find refuge. Key objects and images featured include:

o Edward Hopper’s New York Movie revealing the grand interior of a midtown movie house -- and a female usher in a pensive moment (on loan from The Museum of Modern Art);

o Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach story quilt, which imagines a Harlem rooftop as a sociable gathering place and spot for flights of the imagination (on loan from Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation);

o Romare Bearden‘s joyous mixed media collage, Jammin' at the Savoy, offering a dialogue between painting and music, and a tribute to the iconic Savoy Ballroom (on loan from The Studio Museum);

o Salman Toor’s painting, Bar Boy, depicting a young man at a queer bar in New York, engrossed by his cell phone as a crowd of late-night revelers flows around him (on loan from the Whitney Museum of American Art);

o An exquisite hand-beaded NY skyline cape by Zang Toi, created as a tribute to the designer’s “beloved adopted home, New York City.”

Elinor Carucci 

Emma in Her Room, Shelter-in-Place Time, Corona Days. 2020

© Elinor Carucci. Courtesy Edwynn Houk Gallery 

• AT HOME IN NEW YORK offers a cozy enclave to explore depictions of home in NYC – with both its comforts and challenges. Original artwork, photographs, manuscripts, and other unique objects are presented alongside an interactive digital bookshelf with iconic TV shows such as The Honeymooners, The Jeffersons, and Living Single as well as 20-plus books, brought to life by boldface names including Matthew Broderick, Ronnie Chieng, Rosario Dawson, Lea DeLaria, Peter Hermann, Diane Lane, Sonia Manzano, Joe Pantoliano, Alison Stewart, Tessa Thompson, and Qian Julie Wang.

• YOU ARE HERE is a one-of-a-kind immersive film experience, created in partnership with the awardwinning production company, RadicalMedia. Featuring footage from 400-plus film scenes made in and about New York City, it was curated with the assistance of a committee of film scholars, programmers and experts. (List below.) The experience incorporates movies from every decade and borough - including An Affair to Remember (1957), Black Swan (2010), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Coming to America (1988), Do the Right Thing (1989), Fame (1980), The French Connection (1971), Ghostbusters (1984), Killer’s Kiss (1955), King Kong (1933), Love Story (1970), Manhandled (1924), Midnight Cowboy (1969), Naked City (1948), Paris Is Burning (1990), Rear Window (1954), Saturday Night Fever (1977), Shaft (1971), Speedy (1928), Summer of Soul (2021), Taxi Driver (1976), The Muppets Take Manhattan (1984), The Naked City (1948), The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), The Warriors (1979), Uncut Gems (2019), Wild Style (1982), Working Girl (1988), and many more. And, just outside the screening room is Scenes from the City, a selection of behind-the-scenes shots curated by noted architect, author, and filmmaker James Sanders, featuring productions that have been filmed on location in NYC.

This Is New York is the tentpole exhibition of a year-long centennial celebration marking the Museum’s anniversary and its role in connecting the past, present, and future of the city.

Dr. Henry adds, "We are excited to celebrate our Centennial by offering a diverse range of exhibitions and events that showcase the rich cultural heritage of New York City. Through these offerings, we hope to inspire our visitors to engage with the city's past, present, and future and to deepen their understanding of what makes New York the most dynamic and influential city in the world."

The other exhibitions and events tied to MCNY’s 100th year include:

EXHIBITIONS:

• New York Now: Home – a new photography triennial, which launched in March, showcases the works of 33 emerging and established photographers exploring the concept of "home" in the context of New York City. The exhibition is on view through August 2023.

• MCNY Collections exhibition celebrating the Museum’s founding and highlighting the city's history will feature objects from the Museum's costume, decorative arts, painting, toy, and theater collections -- many of which have not been displayed in decades. On view starting October 2023.

• Manny Vega, a retrospective exhibition honoring the work of the New York City-based artist Manny Vega --known for his colorful murals and mosaics that capture the spirit of the city's Latino culture-- will open in December 2023.

PROGRAMMING:

• Film Forum presents a four-week festival from May 12 - June 8th called The City: Real and Imagined. Inspired by MCNY’s centennial exhibition, the festival will present 60+ NYC-related films including The Sweet Smell of Success, The Naked City, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, Klute, The Landlord, and more. The full line-up can be found on the Film Forum website.

• On Wednesday, May 24th, the Museum’s centennial gala will honor former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg with the Gotham Icon Award in recognition of his steadfast dedication to NYC and his commitment to paving the way for countless generations of New Yorkers.

• In June 2023, MCNY will launch New York on Film: Decade by Decade, a monthly film and speaker series featuring studio, independent, and documentary films reflecting what was going on in NYC at the time they were made. Curated by film programmer Jessica Green, the series offers a journey through New York City, decade by decade, over the last century.

• On June 5th, Brooklyn-born actor and director John Turturro will sit down with journalist and WNYC radio host Alison Stewart for an intimate conversation about what it means to be an artist in New York City. Part of the annual Robert A. and Elizabeth R. Jeffe Distinguished Lecture in Urban History series.

This Is New York: 100 Years of the City in Art and Pop Culture was curated by Sarah M. Henry, Monxo López, Frances A. Rosenfeld, and Lilly Tuttle, with the support of Centennial Research Fellow Naomi Fischer.

Studio Joseph designed the exhibition with graphic design by Marissa Martonyi and Olivia de Salve Villedieu; DOME Collective created the interactive installations including the title motion graphic, Songs of New York, and the digital bookshelf; RadicalMedia produced the You Are Here immersive film; and James Sanders, FAIA curated the Scenes from the City installation, inspired by his book of the same name.

The Centennial Honorary Committee includes Charlie Ahearn; Alec Baldwin; Matthew Broderick; Tituss Burgess; Ric Burns; Sewell Chan; Ronny Chieng; Justin Davidson; Rosario Dawson; Lea DeLaria; Jane Dickson; Dan Doctoroff; Kimberly Drew; Douglas Durst; Michael Eaves; Jennifer Egan; Grandmaster Flash; Mariska Hargitay; Peter Herman; Chamique Holdsclaw; Rich Kleiman; Diane Lane; Min Jin Lee; Joe Lhota; Nancy Lieberman; Sonia Manzano; Darryl McDaniels; Audra McDonald; Jay McInerney; Luis A. Miranda, Jr.; Regina Myer; Joe Namath; Lynn Nottage; Mimi Plange; Zachary Quinto; Eni Popoola; Anthony Ramos; Willis Reed; Emmy Rossum; Russ & Daughters; Amy Sedaris; John Schaefer; Amy Scherber; Annabelle Selldorf; Lucas Sin; Ben Sinclair; Alison Stewart; Ellen Hart Sturm; Hank Willis Thomas; Suzanne Vega; Qian Julie Wang; and Pam Weekes.

The New York Century Exhibition Advisors include Agnes Berecz (Adjunct Associate Professor of History of Art and Design at Pratt); Garnette Cadogan (Tunney Lee Distinguished Lecturer in Urbanism of the School of Planning and Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology); Roz Chast (cartoonist, author, and contributor to The New Yorker); Ken Chen (Assistant Professor and the Associate Director of Creative Writing at Barnard College); Vinson Cunningham (writer, The New Yorker); Thomas Dyja (author and novelist); Jiayang Fan (journalist and staff writer at The New Yorker); Julia Foulkes (Professor of History at The New School for Public Engagement); Richard Koszarski (Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Rutgers); Jeff “Chairman” Mao (author, music journalist, DJ, and curator); Leonard Marcus (children’s book scholar, historian, author and critic); Elena Martínez (Co-Artistic Director of the Bronx Music Heritage Center and a Folklorist at City Lore); Ed Morales (lecturer at Columbia University’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and CUNY Graduate School of Journalism); James Sanders (architect, author, and filmmaker); and Lucy Sante (Visiting Professor of Writing and Photography at Bard College).

The You Are Here curatorial committee includes Bruce Goldstein (film programmer, Film Forum); Jessica Green (film programmer and curator); Carlos V. Gutierrez (film and television director); Richard Koszarski (Professor Emeritus of English and Film at Rutgers); Melissa Lyde (founder of Alfreda's Cinema); Lucy Jane Mukerjee (Senior Programmer at the Tribeca Film Festival); Frances Negrón-Muntaner (filmmaker, writer, curator, scholar, and professor at Columbia University); Jake Perlin (Creative Director of Cinema Conservancy and was the founding Artistic Director and Director of Programming for Metrograph); and JT Takagi (independent filmmaker and sound recordist).

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

1220 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY

www.mcny.org

Martine Gutierrez @ Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco - ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS Exhibition

Martine Gutierrez

ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS

Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco

May 24 – July 15, 2023

MARTINE GUTIERREZ

Aphrodite from ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS, 2021

Chromogenic print, hand-distressed welded aluminum frame, 

55-1/2 x 38-3/4 inches (framed) [141 x 98.4 cm], edition of 7

© Martine Gutierrez, Courtesy of Fraenkel Gallery

Fraenkel Gallery presents ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS, an ambitious new body of work by artist Martine Gutierrez. The series continues her exploration of identity across the cultural landscapes of gender, race, and celebrity. In 17 new works, Martine Gutierrez has transformed herself into a multitude of idols—a selection from the series comprises Martine Gutierrez’s second exhibition with the gallery. Costumed by the barest of essentials, Martine Gutierrez’s figure is the catalyst, reflecting dystopian futurism upon the symbols of our past. Through each metamorphosis, Martine Gutierrez re-envisions a diverse canon of radical heroines who have achieved legendary cultural influence over thousands of years in both art history and pop culture.

Still a patriarchal language, a determinative frame. Still a divisional boundary of womanhood, a categorization of the icon, a spiritual reality in mass production. The same face of currency made over and over again. What is an icon, a cult image? Rather, what is an image? What brings a symbol to power? Culture is history’s political influence, a pendulum of domination. What is power without resistance? The historical moment, and the figure that stands in opposition. Icon as fact, a perceived understanding of truth in the world, teaching us how to see. Image as instruction; see, when an aspiration finds meaning it exceeds its boundaries, it becomes momentous. Larger than life or death, but rather the cycle between lives. Not a vision, but the place we are at now, the inevitable new, the next civilization we are going to become. In refusal of deception, an encounter with unobfuscated femininity is revealed. If the icon shows humanity’s spiritual ideal, it is the anti-icon who refuses the delusion of man, his inflated self-conception. For the icon makes real the image, anti-icon must break through to reveal reality. What is a revelation? A proclamation of clarity, a veneer stripped away, a shattering. It feels like the world is ending, because it did; it has before, and it will again end. What is the world? In the progress of nihilism, creation becomes resistance; a new image of what the world was all along.

– Martine Gutierrez

The project’s cult following began in 2021 when first commissioned by Public Art Fund. Ten images from the original series were chosen to circulate on bus shelters normally used for advertising. Pedestrians encountered the larger-than-life figures on their daily commutes in 300 locations across New York, Chicago, and Boston. Martine Gutierrez adapted these images by veiling the publicly hung nude self-portraits, both delegating her autonomy and struggle in the ongoing political restrictions placed on women’s bodies in the United States.

This summer, Martine Gutierrez reveals ANTI-ICON: APOKALYPSIS in three distinct selections set to preview across three venues: Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco; RYAN LEE Gallery, New York; and Josh Lilley, London. The three-gallery exhibition are accompanied by a new artist book, published by RYAN LEE, entitled APOKALYPSIS. The full collection of 17 portraits is presented in its entirety for the first time in a traveling museum show, organized by Polygon Gallery, Vancouver slated for 2024.

Martine Gutierrez is the sole performer in the series, portraying all 17 groundbreaking figures: Aphrodite, ancient Greek goddess of love, desire and beauty, identified by the Romans as ‘Venus’; Ardhanarishvara, composite male-female figure of the Hindu god Shiva together with his consort Parvati; Atargatis, Syrian mother goddess of fertility and the moon; Cleopatra, Egyptian ruler famed for her influence on Roman politics; Queen Elizabeth I, England’s second female monarch when the country asserted itself as a major power in politics, commerce, and the arts in the 16th century; Gabriel, angel in the Abrahamic religions believed by many to be able to take on any physical form; Helen of Troy, Greek beauty seen as the cause of the Trojan war; Joan of Arc, sainted heroine of France, revered as a holy person for her faithfulness and bravery in battle, burned at the stake by the church; Judith The Slayer, courageous biblical widow who used her charm to save her people from an Assyrian general; Lady Godiva, bold noblewoman from the Medieval period who fought for justice for everyday people; Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mesoamerican Catholic title of Mary, who appeared to the Indigenous man Juan Diego and imprinted herself on his cloak as proof of her visitation; Mary Magdalene, ‘Magdalene’ means tower, as she is an early tower of the Christian faith, cited in the four canonical gospels as a follower and companion of Jesus Christ, a witness to his crucifixion and resurrection; The Virgin Mary, a young Jewish virgin from Nazareth, chosen by God to conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit; La Madonna, Italian for ‘Lady, Virgin Mary’, central figure of Christianity, celebrated as the ‘Virgin Queen’ in processions of Semana Santa, throughout Spain and Latin America; Hua Mulan, famed warrior of Chinese folklore who disguised herself as a man to fight in battle; Sacagawea, Shoshone interpreter and guide of the expedition to discover routes through pre-colonial America, journaled by Lewis and Clark; Queen of Sheba, Ethiopian queen, known for her wit, power, and wealth, her romance with King Solomon is documented in the Kebra Nagast.

MARTINE GUTIERREZ (b. 1989, Berkeley, California; lives and works in New York) is a transdisciplinary artist whose practice includes photography, performance, music, and film. Her work has been featured in solo museum exhibitions at the Australian Centre for Photography, Darlinghurst, Australia; Blaffer Art Museum, University of Houston, Houston; Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, North Carolina; Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma; and the Rockwell Museum, Corning, New York, among others. Her work is included in the collections of the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University, Stanford, California; Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York; Milwaukee Art Museum; Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C.; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.

FRAENKEL GALLERY

40 Geary Street, San Francisco 94108

www.fraenkelgallery.com