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Centre de la photographie – geneve opens Cindy Sherman That’s me – That’s not me First works

Centre de la photographie – geneve presents Cindy Sherman That’s me – That’s not me First works on view December 5, 2012 to January 13, 2013.

In 1972, at the age of 18 years, Cindy Sherman began studying painting at Buffalo State College. It changes the department in 1975 to devote himself to photography, and completed his studies in summer 1976. A year later, the artist left Buffalo and moved to New York. Contrary to widespread belief, the Untitled Film Stills (1977-1980) are not his early work. Indeed, during his years in Buffalo, between 1975 and 1977, she developed the work to be the foundation of his future work. During these three years is the genesis of the work of the artist.

Cindy Sherman develops his understanding of art movements of his time in an exhibition artist run, the “Hallwalls,” founded in November 1974 by Charles Clough and Robert Longo, his companion at the time. With regular visits to artists scheduled (“visiting artists”), she met the “Hallwalls” artists such as Vito Acconci, Bruce Nauman and Chris Burden. For her, some women artists have a role model, including Lynda Benglis, Hannah Wilke, Adrian Piper, Eleanor Antin and Suzy Lake. They were, in the words of Cindy Sherman herself, the “role models” because these artists used their own bodies to produce art. Thus, the first work of Cindy Sherman are strongly influenced by the modes of expression that began to prevail in avant-garde circles during the 1970s, such as film, video, photography, installation, performance, and artistic movements such as conceptual art and body art.

The early years of Cindy Sherman left divided into three phases. The artist starts first in the portrait. With an effective use of makeup and mimicry extensively studied, it designs a series that show his face transformation. Thus, photographs such as Untitled (Growing Up) represent the journey of a young girl moving towards the age of a young woman and thematize the process of adolescence. Its second phase begins with a support whole-body performance. She poses in photography, roles and identities the most diverse. She even cut in photographic paper figures mimicked and played, becoming “cutouts” see even animate these cinematically “cutouts” or the overlap as a result of movements of Marey. The third phase reveals different characters from each other, interacting with each other, as is the case in “cutouts” A Play of Selves, and Murder Mystery Bus Riders (all dating from 1976).

A Play of Selves present, with 244 figures and 72 scenes, a play in four acts and a final staged with great care. The artist represents traits with the most diverse (such as madness, desire, vanity, suffering or broken woman and the ideal lover) The world is both complex and ambivalent women. In the series Murder Mystery, roughing it approx 211 “cutouts” and 80 scenes a spate whose end is uncertain. Subsequently, Cindy Sherman staged including roles jealous lover, a servant, a mother and as a detective. Both series are complex in their construction and follow storyboards developed. The characters are enlarged with different sizes according to the scenes. Cindy Sherman decides the number of scenes from spatial situations. She fixed directly on the wall, at eye level, and thus creates a facility that supports the whole exhibition space.

The first work of the artist, conceived in Buffalo, is marked by a process of conceptual and performative. Many “cutouts” were lost because of their format ephemeral it goes on and Bus Riders. It is in the past years in Buffalo Cindy Sherman first game disguise his artistic concept and develop a large number of photographs now extinct. Among these photographs, many of them together so obvious elements borrowed from the theater and cinema. We now have more than 35 years of viewing countless female roles and identities created by the artist.

For three years for the collection SAMMLUNG VERBUND and in close collaboration with the artist, Gabriele Schor updated scientifically the early conceptual and performative Cindy Sherman, which led to the first catalog raisonné of his work , released in January 2012 in two versions, one German and one English by Hatje Cantz Verlag. The exhibition Cindy Sherman – That’s me – That’s not me – First Works 1975-1977, the Centre de la photographie Geneva, shows for the first time publicly about 50 works from the artist’s collection SAMMLUNG VERBUND acquired since its founding in 2004. Exposure to the GC – November 30, 2012 to January 13, 2013 – is completed works from different periods of Cindy Sherman from various private collections in Geneva. This is the first solo exhibition of the artist in Switzerland since World Morality in 1994 at the Kunsthalle Basel. His first solo exhibition in Switzerland since 1982 at the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva.

Centre de la photographie – geneve
28, rue des Bains
CH – 1205 Geneva
T: + 41 22 329 28 35
F: + 41 22 320 99 04
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www.centrephotogeneve.ch