PHOTO:Cindy Sherman

The staging of female role models is the central theme of Cindy Sherman’s work, in which the American artist explores stereotypes of the collective visual memory in a media-driven society. With her photographs, Cindy Sherman has had a lasting influence on 20th century art. Much like an actress, she portrays herself in different roles before the camera.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Cindy Sherman & the Goetz Collection

Although Sherman’s photographs are self-portraits in the traditional sense, they do not reveal much about the artist’s personality. Rather, her primary concern is the deconstruction of gender roles and stereotypes. Sherman developed early in her childhood an obsession for disguise and masquerade, which she further pursued at the Art Academy in Buffalo. The artist became known with her black and white series, “Untitled Film Stills” (1977-1980), in which she embodied stereotypical female characters from fictional scenes of the ‘50s. Later, she created large-format color photographs, which explored topics such as fashion photography, fairytale characters, horror scenes and society ladies. In 1992 Sherman embarked on a series of photographs now referred to as “Sex Pictures”. For the first time, Sherman is entirely absent from these photographs. Instead, she uses dolls and prosthetic body parts, this time posed in highly sexual poses. With 60 works, the retrospective, which was designed in close collaboration with the artist and is presented in the Gallery Building of the Goetz Collection, provides an excellent overview of her entire work.

Info: Goetz Collection, Oberföhringer Straße 103, München, Duration: 29/1-18/7/15, Days & Hours: BY APPOITMENT ONLY, Tue & Fri: 14:00-18:00, Sat: 11:00-16:00, www.sammlung-goetz.de/en/Home.htm