Artist Tracey Emin @ Faurschou New York - "Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made" Exhibition

Tracey Emin

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Faurschou New York

Through 14 July, 2024

TRACEY EMIN

Life Model Goes Mad IV, 1996

Giclee on photo rag paper, 20.9 x 20.5 in

Image courtesy of © Tracey Emin Studio

TRACEY EMIN

Life Model Goes Mad XI, 1996

Giclee on photo rag paper, 20.9 x 20.5 in

Image courtesy of © Tracey Emin Studio

”I stopped painting when I was pregnant. The smell of the oil paints and the turps made me feel physically sick, and even after my termination, I couldn't paint. It's like I needed to punish myself by stopping the thing I loved doing the most. I hated my body; I was scared of the dark; I was scared of being asleep. I was suffering from guilt and punishing myself, so I threw myself in a box and gave myself three and a half weeks to sort it out. And I did. My only regret about this project was that I didn't carry on painting from that moment. It took me another five years before I started painting again.” – Tracey Emin

In 1996, British artist TRACEY EMIN (b. 1963) locked herself naked in an enclosed room at a gallery in Stockholm for 3 weeks to reconcile her anxieties and guilt around painting, a medium she had abandoned 6 years prior. After a traumatic period in the early 90s with two abortions, Tracey Emin could not physically stand the thought of painting and wanted to face her troubled relationship with the medium. Through fish-eye lenses in the exterior walls of the room, visitors could follow glimpses of Emin’s process. This exhibition at Faurschou New York marks the first time that this seminal work of art is exhibited in the United States.

Tracey Emin’s performance is not merely to be understood as catharsis, a cleansing self-therapy, but as the staging of an artistic exorcism by Tracey Emin enacting her own life in front of the viewers. Initially, Tracey Emin had intended for the paintings made inside the room to be destroyed in a fire after the performance, but she ultimately decided against it, leaving the space and works as a testimony of the physically and mentally challenging journey she had been through. The entire collection of artworks and objects in the room were preserved as an installation, which are all exhibited here in their original constellation.

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

TRACEY EMIN

Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made

Installation view by Victoria Hely Hutchinson, 2023

© Faurschou

The paintings and drawings that Tracey Emin created in the process refer to and appropriate works by male artists Egon Schiele, Yves Klein, Edvard Munch, and Pablo Picasso. Historically, women’s access to the artist’s studio have been as models, not artists. The representation of women has been a male affair, where the female nude stands out as the most distinct example of the objectification of the female body. However, in Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made, Tracey Emin positions herself in the double role as both model and artist, challenging the universal acceptance of women as objects of the male gaze. Further, Emin documented the performance in the photographic series The Life Model Goes Mad, in which she takes on the role of the model in her own studio, reclaiming female identity and sexuality.

Tracey Emin is known for her autobiographical and confessional works, with themes of femininity, abortion, and the political and stigmatic structures surrounding them. Exorcism of the Last Painting I Ever Made stands out as a pivotal work and predecessor to a line of works, in which Tracey Emin uses her own life, trauma, and emotions as a means of expression, with the most widely recognized piece being My Bed (1998). After the exhibition in 1996 in Sweden, Tracey Emin once again had to distance herself from painting, but ultimately took it up again. Today, Tracey Emin’s artistic practice and voice to further the recognition of female artists is as vibrant and poignant as ever.

Tracey Emin by Harry Weller

© Tracey Emin Studio

TRACEY EMIN - Biography

Tracey Emin was born in 1963 in London. She currently lives and works between London, the South of France, and Margate, UK.

Tracey Emin has exhibited extensively including major exhibitions at Munchmuseet, Oslo (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Musée d’Orsay, Paris (2019); Château La Coste, Aix-en-Provence, France (2017); Leopold Museum, Vienna (2015); Museum of Contemporary Art, Miami (2013); Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (2012); Turner Contemporary, Margate, UK (2012); Hayward Gallery, London (2011); Kunstmuseum Bern (2009); Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh (2008); Centro de Arte Contemporáneo, Malaga, Spain (2008); Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2003); and Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2002).

In 2007 Tracey Emin represented Great Britain at the 52nd VeniceBiennale and her installation My Bed has been included in ‘In Focus’ displays at Tate Britain with Francis Bacon (2015), Tate Liverpool with William Blake and also at Turner Contemporary, Margate alongside JMW Turner (2017).

In 2011, Tracey Emin was appointed Professor of Drawing at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, and in 2012 was made Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her contributions to the visual arts.

Tracey Emin’s expressive and visceral art is one of disclosure, dealing with personal experience and heightened states of emotion. Frank and intimate but universal in its relevance, her work draws on the fundamental themes of love, desire, loss and grief, unravelling in the process the nuanced constructs of ‘woman’ and ‘self’ through probing self-exploration. ‘The most beautiful thing is honesty, even if it’s really painful to look at’, she has remarked.

Wide-ranging in scope, Tracey Emin’s practice includes painting, drawing, film, photography, sewn appliqué, sculpture and neon, all of which are transformed into highly personalised mediums for her singular voice. The genres of self-portraiture and the nude run throughout, both intricately bound up with the emotional journey of her life and the travails of her own biography. In her early work, often characterised by unflinching personal revelation, Emin makes reference to her family, childhood, and chaotic teenage years growing up in the seaside town of Margate. Her relationships, pregnancies and abortions are recounted through drawings, photographs, found objects and videos in a manner that is neither tragic nor sentimental and which resonates deeply with the audience.

FAURSCHOU NEW YORK

148 Green Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222

www.faurschou.com

TRACEY EMIN: EXORCISM OF THE LAST PAINTING I EVER MADE 

FAURSCHOU NEW YORK, 21 October, 2023 – 14 July, 2024 

Liu Xiaodong @ Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen

Liu Xiaodong: Painting As Shooting
Curated by Jérôme Sans
Faurschou Foundation Copenhagen
Through December 16,  2016

Photo of artwork ‘Xuzi at Home’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

2010

Oil on canvas, 140 x 150 cm.

Collection of the artist

Photo of artwork ‘The Nude Black Maya’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

The Nude Black Maya, 2009,

Oil on canvas, 200 x 250 cm.

Private Collection

Faurschou Foundation presents the third and final Liu Xiaodong exhibition in its Copenhagen space.

Painting as Shooting is conceived as an exhibition in three chapters, curated by Jérôme Sans and produced by Faurschou Foundation, in Venice, Beijing and Copenhagen. The first step, which took place at the Cini Foundation for the 56th Venice Biennale, was the first major European institutional exhibition to fully explore Liu Xiaodong’s unique practice, as one of China’s most influential painters of the last two decades. The second, presented by Faurschou Foundation in its Beijing space, presented the most recent series of works created by the artist during his stay in Ordos in Inner Mongolia. The last chapter, mixing the first two shows, represents the most updated survey on Liu Xiaodong’s work.

The exhibition, Painting as Shooting, focuses on a unique selection of some of the artist’s most important projects from the last decade. They deal with major global, sociological, cultural, economic, ecological and environmental issues from the past ten years. It is not meant as a retrospective exhibition, but rather as a journey through images of the various worlds and situations he has witnessed all over the world, in locations such as China, Asia, Cuba, Europe, Israel, etc.

Photo of artwork ‘Jincheng Airport’.

© Xiaodong Studio

Liu Xiaodong

Jincheng Airport, 2010,

Oil on canvas,

300 x 400 cm.

Collection of the artist

Most recently Liu Xiaodong reactivated the issue on human migration, which appeared in his earlier "Hot Bed" series. Previously he portrayed migrants within Asia, both in his homeland China and in Thailand. Today Liu focuses on the largest migration and humanitarian problem since World War II: communities taking the most dangerous trip across the Mediterranean Sea and the most hazardous routes into Europe to escape the wars in the Middle East and Africa, hoping to find a better future in Europe. This issue will not only impact Europe, but the rest of the world.

Liu Xiaodong's projects will also be presented in an extended book, containing large graphical illustrations, sketches, diary notes and texts by Jérôme Sans. In addition to the exhibition there will be shown ten documentaries each following the different projects.

Painting as shooting

Liu Xiaodong is a painter of everyday life. His images are of family and friends set against modest scenery capturing ordinary moments, such as eating, laughing or playing games. However, in-depth exploration of what is hidden behind the small stories that populate the surface of his work reveals a much bigger picture. Xiaodong’s paintings are pointing with simple gestures to the reality of the periphery, the margins and the paradoxes of our contemporary society. It is the reality that no one dares to speak about; the tough reality of daily existence that reaches out to us from displaced communities—from migrant workers, victims of ecological and natural disasters and sex workers to the new homeless—all sharing the dream of a better life.

Liu Xiaodong approaches his work with the eyes and the storyboard practice of a filmmaker. Each of the artist’s major works begins with a simple idea from one of his daily diary entries, describing the events he has witnessed, photos he has taken or people he has met, and then transforms them into live characters on his canvas. In a way the artist’s paintings resemble a production set where he acts as a director who collaborates with actors to play, record or recreate a situation, various impressions or the effects thereof. It is hereby that Liu Xioadong embodies the concept of "painting as shooting."

Biographies

Photo of the artist Liu Xioadong

Photo by © Jiang Jia

Liu Xiaodong (1963) lives and works in Beijing. He holds a BFA and an MFA in painting from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing (1988–95). The artist gained recognition in the 1990s and represents the Chinese Neo-Realism style. His solo exhibitions include Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2012) and Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2010), while his work was also shown in various group exhibitions such as the Shanghai Biennale (2000, 2010), the 15th Biennale of Sydney (2006) and the 47th Venice Biennale (1997).

The artist Liu Xiaodong with the curator Jèrôme Sans, Venice, 2015.

Photo by Yu Hong, © Faurschou Foundation & Liu Xiaodong Studio

Jérôme Sans is an internationally renowned curator, art critic, artistic director who has curated numerous major exhibitions around the world. He was the former director of the ground-breaking Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art in Beijing and co-founder of the acclaimed Palais de Tokyo in Paris. He is currently artistic director of one of the most important urban development projects in Europe, the Lyon Rives de Saône-River Movie, and co-founder of Perfect Crossovers ltd, a Beijing based cultural consultancy group.

FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION
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Liu Wei & Ai Weiwei at Faurschou Foundation, Beijing

Liu Wei & Ai Weiwei: Works from the Collection
Faurschou Foundation, Beijing
13 October 2011 - 26 February 2012

The current show at Faurschou Foundation is the first show of works from the Faurschou Foundation collection, and thus marks the transition from commercial gallery to art foundation that Faurschou has now undergone. With the establishment of Faurschou Foundation, Luise and Jens Faurschou are realizing a long-held dream of devoting all their time, skills and networks to expanding and developing their collection of contemporary art, and creating exhibitions of a high international standard, both at the existing premises here in Beijing, and at the new exhibition space in Copenhagen which will open next year in September with a solo show by Cai Guo-Qiang.

In the future the exhibitions at Faurschou Foundation in Beijing and in Copenhagen will take their point of departure in the collection, and Luise and Jens Faurschou will be creating new exhibitions in collaboration with some of the best contemporary artists, curators, museums and galleries all over the world. For many years it has been the dream of Luise and Jens Faurschou to focus on the collection and its development, and the possibility of showing it. On the basis of the results and the collection created over the years, it has now become possible to realize this dream.

Faurschou Foundation currently presents works from the collection by Ai Weiwei and Liu Wei.

Entering the gallery the viewer is almost walking into Map of China, a large sculpture made out of Iron wood (Tieli wood) that Ai Weiwei has collected from dismantled temples of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

Many of Ai Weiwei's works from the past decade are made of local materials and of antique Chinese objects, Neolithic pottery, tables and chairs from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, wood, doors and windows from demolished temples and traditional houses, freshwater pearls, tea, marble, stone, bamboo etc. - 'ready-mades' trans¬lated into a conceptual, post-minimalist idiom.

Ai Weiwei points to the loss of culture by transforming the historical objects into something new - into moving and highly sensual contemporary artworks which thanks to their aesthetic beauty recirculate the meaning and history of these valuable cultural artifacts in the context of contemporary China.

From his recent grand-scale installation at TATE Modern in London earlier this year a field of porcelain handmade Sunflower Seeds covers the floor.

At TATE Modern Ai Weiwei installed a 100-ton thick layer of sun¬flower seeds on the floor - 100 million seeds - all made of porcelain produced and painted by hand in Jingdezhen.

The number of seeds is overwhelming, and yet 100 million is not even that many in the Chinese context. It is precisely in China that it is possible to produce such a labour-intensive work - and the work is very much about the relationship between the mass and the individual, and about China's increasing dominance in the world economy.

Sunflower Seeds is an incredibly beautiful, poetic work, simple, and with many layers of meaning connected to Chinese history.

Ai Weiwei has in the past years been engaged in the loss of lives after the Sichuan Earthquake. Namelist of student earthquake victims found by the citizen investigation, 2008 - is the names of students who died in the Sichuan earthquake in 2008. The list has been collected by the citizen investigation volunteers. The date for the work is open ended as not all the identities of the students have been found out. Some names are not able to be found as entire families have disappeared after the earthquake. The government has never revealed the full list of victims of the earthquake, but only a number. The citizen investigation volunteer's aim is to give each number a name.

In the second part of the exhibition space - Don't Touch by Liu Wei hangs suspended from the ceiling.

Composed of sewn together ox-hides, Liu Wei's rendering of the Potala Palace in Tibet, Don't Touch, is the largest work to date from the artist's series of sculpted dog chews representing a disarray of global headquarters. The mock-ups demonstrate Liu Wei's early interest in questions of power, the relationship between landscape and architecture and the material condition of the visual.

Standing higher than any other palace in the world at over 3,700 meters above sea level, the Potala Palace is a conspicuous but almost passé religious, political, and cultural symbol, presented to the world with pride and yet a stain on the reputation of many. Perhaps dispelling politicization, perhaps creating a fantastical pseudo-religious object, perhaps pointing to a dystopian mutation stemming from a larger social lack of spiritual direction, we can't be sure. But Liu Wei "lets it hang", and advises, irony intended, "Don't touch".

FAURSCHOU FOUNDATION

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