| | | | | | | | Cindy Sherman, Untitled 648, 2023 © Cindy Sherman
Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth | | | | | | Man Ray » Liberating Photography | | | | 29 March – 4 August 2024 | | | | | | | | | | | | 29 March – 2 June 2024 | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | Cindy Sherman, Untitled 627, 2010/2023 © Cindy Sherman
Courtesy the artist and Hauser Wirth | | | | | | | 29 March – 4 August 2024 | | | Cindy Sherman is considered to be one of the most important American artists of her generation. Her ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades.
In this new body of work, the artist collages parts of her own face to construct the identities of various characters, using digital manipulation to accent the layered aspects and plasticity of the self. Sherman has removed any scenic backdrops or mise-en-scène–the focus of this series is the face. She combines a digital collaging technique using black and white and color photographs with other traditional modes of transformation, such as make-up, wigs and costumes, to create a series of unsettling characters who laugh, twist, squint and grimace in front of the camera. To create the fractured characters, Sherman has photographed isolated parts of her body–her eyes, nose, lips, skin, hair, ears–which she cuts, pastes and stretches onto a foundational image, ultimately constructing, deconstructing and then reconstructing a new face.
The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue by Hauser & Wirth Publishers. | | | | | | | | | Cindy Sherman, Cindy Sherman, Untitled 631, 2010/2023 © Cindy Sherman
Courtesy the artist and Hauser Wirth | | | | | | Creative process
In the double role of both photographer and model, Sherman upends the usual dynamic between artist and subject. Here, the sitter does not technically exist–all portraits are comprised of composites of the artist’s face–however, they still read as classical portraiture and, despite the layers, the image still gives a true impression of a ‘sitter’. Tightly cropped, with frames full of hair, stretched-out faces or swathes of material, Sherman’s construction of her characters disrupts the voyeur-gaze and subject-object binaries that are often associated with traditional portraiture. In works such as Untitled #661 (2023), subtle changes, such as the positioning of a towel, the copy and pasting of an eyebrow from one image to another, or the elongation of a facial feature, alter the entire demeanor and representation of the imagined ‘sitter.’
This type of warping of the face is akin to the use of prosthetics that Sherman began using in the mid-1980s in series such as History Portraits (1988) or Masks from the 1990s, exploring the more grotesque or abject aspects of humanity. Like her use of costumes, wigs and makeup, the application of prosthetics would often be left exposed, breaking, rather than upholding, any sense of illusion. Similarly, the use of digital manipulation in her new series exaggerates the tensions between identity and artifice.
This is heightened in works such as Untitled #631 (2010/2023) where Sherman combines both black and white and colored fragments, highlighting the presence of the artist’s hand and disrupting any perception of reality, while also harking back to the hand-colored and hand-cut works that she made in the 1970s. By employing this layering technique, Sherman creates a site of multiplicity, exploring the notion that identity is a complex, and often constructed, human characteristic that is impossible to capture in a singular picture. | | | | | | | | | Cindy Sherman, Untitled 659, 2023 © Cindy Sherman
Courtesy the artist and Hauser Wirth | | | | | | Born in 1954, Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with the Pictures Generation group, Sherman first turned her attention to photography at Buffalo State College in the early 1970s. In 1977, shortly after moving to New York City, she began her critically acclaimed series of Untitled Film Stills . Sherman continued to channel and reconstruct familiar personas known to the collective psyche, often in unsettling ways, and by the mid to late 1980s, the artist’s visual language began to explore the more grotesque aspects of humanity through the lens of horror and the abject, as seen in works such as Fairy Tales (1985) and Disasters (1986-89). These highly visceral images saw the artist introduce visible prostheses and mannequins into her work, which would later be used in series such as Sex Pictures (1992) to add to the layers of artifice in her constructed female identities. Like Sherman’s use of costumes, wigs and makeup, their application would often be left exposed. Her renowned History Portraits , begun in 1988, used these theatrical effects to break, rather than uphold, any sense of illusion.
Since the early 2000s, Sherman has used digital technology to further manipulate her cast of characters in her work. This is evident in her Clown series (2003), Society Portraits (2008) and her Flappers series (2016). In 2017, Sherman began using Instagram to upload portraits that utilize several face-altering apps, morphing the artist into a plethora of protagonists in kaleidoscopic settings. Disorientating and uncanny, the posts highlight the dissociative nature of Instagram from reality.
Sherman’s work has been recognized by numerous grants and awards, including a MacArthur Fellowship, Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship and the Hasselblad Award. It has also been the subject of several major retrospectives, including at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 1998, the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2012, and the National Portrait Gallery, London, in 2019. | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Man Ray » Liberating Photography | | | | 29 March – 4 August 2024 | | | "To be totally liberated from painting and its aesthetic implications" was the first avowed aim of Man Ray (United States, 1890-1976), who began his career as a painter. Photography was one of the major breakthroughs of modern art and led to a rethinking of notions of representation. In the 1920s and 30s, the photographic medium came to the forefront of the avant-garde movement, and Man Ray soon made a name for himself with his virtuosity. As a studio portraitist and fashion photographer, but also as an experimental artist who explored the potential of photography with the people around him, Man Ray was a multi-faceted figure. Considered one of the 20th century’s major artists, close to Dada and then Surrealism, he photographed Paris’ artistic milieu between the wars.
EXHIBITION
Curated from a private collection, the exhibition explores the artist’s extensive social contacts while presenting some of his most iconic works. In addition to providing a dazzling who’s who of the Parisian avant-garde, the works also highlight the innovations in photography made by Man Ray in Paris in the 1920s and 30s.
ARTIST
He took his first photographs in New York in the 1910s, but it was in Paris that his career took off. Even before opening his studio in Montparnasse in 1922, Man Ray worked for a year in his hotel room. The photographer's reputation grew, and before long, the artist's studio was flourishing. Fashion photographs alternated with portraits of the artistic figures of the day who had made Paris’ notoriety: Marcel Duchamp, whom he met in New York in 1915 and who introduced him to the Parisian artistic elite, as well as Robert Delaunay, Georges Braque, Alberto Giacometti and Pablo Picasso, among others, who posed for the photographer. His portraits also included Ballets Russes dancers and guests at the Count de Beaumont's ball.
As soon as he arrived in Paris in the summer of 1921, Man Ray immediately became part of the Parisian intelligentsia of the Roaring Twenties. He met Jean Cocteau, who was himself a fixture of the Parisian art scene, André Breton, Francis Picabia, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse and Max Ernst. He also met Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Igor Stravinsky, Ernest Hemingway, Arnold Schoenberg and James Joyce, whom he photographed for the Anglo-American bookshop Shakespeare and Company. But Man Ray was not merely content to have celebrities pose in his studio or to explore the female nude genre by working with those he considered his muses, such as Lee Miller, Kiki de Montparnasse, Meret Oppenheim and Adrienne Fidelin.
Creative process
Man Ray also experimented in the darkroom, transforming the photographic medium into a powerful tool of artistic expression, even going so far as to do away with the camera when, in 1921-1922, he began creating photograms, which he coined "rayographs" after himself. He explained that working with light in the darkroom allowed him to free himself from painting, so convinced was he of the visual power of his experiments. Also in the 1920s, he experimented with the moving image and produced four films. The rhythm and freedom offered by the cinema complemented his photographic work, in which he saw a close relationship between film and poetry. This is why he gave his film Emak Bakia (1926) the subheading of "cinépoème". Without ever abandoning portraiture, he experimented with other techniques in the 1930s: solarization, overprinting and other distortions.
From the outset, photography has been more than a simple process of reproduction. For him, images were not taken fleetingly, but meticulously realized indoors. Unlike Henri Cartier-Bresson who opted for the spontaneous gesture and saw the street as a privileged playground, Man Ray composed and staged his photographs. The studio provided him with a space in which to explore his imagination. Some of the themes dear to the Surrealists can be found in his work: femininity, sexuality, strangeness, the boundary between dream and reality. His nude studies were part of his artistic research, which he developed in close collaboration with his companions who were part of the Parisian art scene. Kiki de Montparnasse–the woman with the f-holes of a violin on her back–whose real name was Alice Prin, was a dancer, singer, actress and painter who posed for artists such as Chaïm Soutine and Kees van Dongen. Lee Miller, a fellow New Yorker like him, had begun a modeling career in the United States but wanted to move to the other side of the camera. She met the photographer in Paris in 1929 when she was 22-years old, and became active in the Surrealist movement. More than a muse, she became his collaborator, learning photography at his side. Together, they discovered the technique of solarization. Another artist with whom Man Ray had a professional and romantic relationship was the Swiss artist Meret Oppenheim, who was close to the Surrealist scene before pursuing an independent career as an artist.
Man Ray loved the freedom his photographic creations afforded him, and portraits and fashion photography enabled him to earn a living. It was in his studio that he embarked on a series of visual experiments. His portraits, which are relatively classical in style, testify not only to his commercial success, but also to his great sociability. Artists from Montparnasse, Surrealists, fashion and nightlife celebrities, patrons of the arts, Americans in Paris–the entire artistic elite–passed through his studio, as was the case with Nadar in the 19th century. Almost 50 years after Man Ray's death, his photographs continue to fascinate us. His impact on the history of the medium is undeniable, and he served as an inspiration to photographers of the caliber of Berenice Abbott, Bill Brandt and Lee Miller. Man Ray remains one of the most famous photographers of the 20th century. He never stopped creating, without prejudice or constraint. | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Christian Marclay, Video still from Photomaton © Collection Photo Elysée | | | | | | | | PHOTO BOOTH | | | | 29 March – 2 June 2024 | | | Four portraits taken by a machine and printed in just a few minutes! This is the experience offered by the photo booth since its invention in 1924. It was an immediate success, particularly with the proliferation of identity documents requiring a portrait complying with specific standards (bare head, uniform background, neutral expression, etc.).
Few people are unfamiliar with the experience of the "Photomaton", the name of the photo booth often found in train stations. Automated, self-service, available 24/7, socially neutral and, above all, less expensive than a portrait taken by a professional–and less intimidating as well–this photographic process popularized the experience of having a portrait taken, quickly, anywhere and inexpensively. The precursor of the Polaroid and the selfie, formed from the words "photo" and "automaton", this unmanned process, a veritable photographer's automaton, offering four unique prints, fascinated artists. In 1929, André Breton and his Surrealist friends were already interested in this image box. | | | | | | | | | | Phin Sallin-Mason, Puzzled, 2024 © ECAL Phin Sallin-Mason | | | | | | Exhibition
Photo Elysée, which showcases a wide range of techniques from the history of photography, acquired an automated photo studio a few years back. Since then, the museum has offered the public the opportunity to photograph themselves and, if they wish, to leave their portraits, thus creating a collective archive (over 2,000 snapshots have been collected to date).
The artist, Christian Marclay, invited by the museum to immerse himself in the Photo Elysée collections in 2021, chose to explore these thousands of faces recorded by the museum's Photomaton. With him, ECAL photography students explored, scanned and metamorphosed the preserved prints. The idea of the project was to appropriate the analogous images and to open them up to new experiments in order to tell new stories. Visitors are invited to take a seat in front of the various installations and let themselves be carried away by new visual sequences born of varied explorations ranging from simple mechanics to the latest digital tools. | | | | | | | | | Carla Corminboeuf & Cyriane Rawyler, Fading, 2024
© ECAL Carla Corminboeuf & Cyriane Rawyler | | | | | | Photomaton
In a closed place in an open space, protected only by a curtain, the photo booth is situated somewhere between the private and the public realm. On an adjustable stool to regulate the height of your head, having rearranged your hair for the last time, concentrated before the flash, seated in front of the mirror, curtain drawn, you are both present and removed from the world. The photo booth offers a confined space for free expression, where you can smile, make faces, pose for the camera... You're emancipated, but only when the machine is watching you. Whether individually or in a group, this place becomes a playground and questions identity.
Christian Marclay
Christian Marclay (USA/Switzerland, 1955) has been developing a unique body of work since the late 1970s, exploring the juxtaposition of sound recording, photography, video and film. A multimedia artist, his work is at the crossroads of several genres, from acoustic performance to still and moving images, and collage.
Like a DJ, the artist fragments, assembles and reassembles vinyl records, record covers and other objects to superimpose auditory or visual effects. The Centre Pompidou in Paris recently presented a major retrospective of his work. | | | | | | | | | | Phin Sallin-Mason, Puzzled, 2024 © ECAL Phin Sallin-Mason | | | | | | ECAL students
The exhibition presented at Photo Elysée includes works by Bachelor Photography students from ECAL. Hector Codazzi Carla Corminboeuf Yves Möhrle Léo Paschoud Cyriane Rawyler Phinn Salin-Mason Noé Vercaemst | | | | |
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Vues et données_2023 © HEAD | | | | | | | | Aurélie Pétrel × Fabien Vallos × HEAD × ENSP | | | | 29 March – 2 June 2024 | | | The View & Data exhibition is the result of a research project revolving around the question of data, headed by artist-photographer Aurélie Pétrel and philosopher Fabien Vallos, in collaboration with two schools, the HEAD Geneva and the ENSP Arles.
This research analyzes the implications of the concept of "data" in the fields of art, contemporary photography and theory. It can be summed up in two main points: first, that data alone cannot produce any system whatsoever of representation of the world; and second, that it is preferable–according to Catherine Malabou's theories–to attempt to give it plasticity. This means granting it the possibility of a form rather than a value.
The final phase of the project is the exhibition, which brings together everything that has been produced, collected and conceived of as part of the research. It should be seen as a form and an image. As a form, it is that of a sort of "container" in which Aurélie Pétrel and Fabien Vallos have deposited works, objects and comments. As an image, it represents the plasticity of the data and the infinite number of possible links between all of the elements present.
The structure of the exhibition, conceptualized and produced by Dieudonné Cartier, includes works by Aurélie Pétrel, some 50 objects collected by Aurélie Pétrel and Fabien Vallos, and over 100 commentaries produced in collaboration with students in the Fig. Laboratory at the ENSP Arles and the Visual Arts CCC Master's Program at the HEAD Geneva. All this work has been brought together in a catalogue published for the occasion.
Exhibition with the support of the BNP Paribas Switzerland Foundation and the Federal Office of Culture (FOC). | | | | | | unsubscribe here
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