PHOTO:Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is widely recognized as one of the most important and influential artists in contemporary art. Throughout her career, she has presented a sustained, eloquent, and provocative exploration of the construction of contemporary identity and the nature of representation, drawn from the unlimited supply of images from movies, TV, magazines, the Internet, and art history.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Vancouver Art Gallery Archive

A retrospective of more than 170 works by Cindy Sherman known for her conceptual portraits is on presentation Vancouver Art Gallery. This exhibition focuses on Sherman’s manipulation of her own appearance and her deployment of material derived from a range of cultural sources, including film, advertising and fashion. Organized by the National Portrait Gallery, London, in collaboration with the Vancouver Art Gallery, it is the first retrospective of Sherman’s work in Canada in twenty years. The exhibition showcases a selection from every major photographic series the artist has produced, from the early “Untitled Film Stills” of the 1970s, through to her newest “Untitled #602” (2019), which highlights the artist’s consistent engagement with the fashion industry. Exploring the development of Sherman’s work from the beginning of her career in the mid-1970s to the present, the exhibition includes rarely-seen photographs and films created while Sherman was an art student at the State University College at Buffalo from 1972 to 1976.  In “Cover Girl (Vogue)” (1976/2011) Cindy Sherman photographed herself on the cover of Vogue as Jerry Hall, the supermodel girlfriend of Mick Jagger. The first photograph in this triptych is the original cover with Hall, photographed in black-and-white. In the second photograph we see Sherman’s face, which suddenly looks a lot like Hall’s. In the third photograph, Sherman winks playfully back at the camera, spoiling any illusion of resemblance. This exhibition also features a digital version of “A Cindy Book”, a personal album of family photographs tracing back to the artist’s childhood. Another exhibition highlight are the depictions of Sherman’s studio in New York with a selection of source materials including her notes, sketches, and other behind-the-scene elements that have influenced her work. Additionally, the Vancouver Art Gallery presentation includes a number of Sherman works from its permanent collection. Considered one of the most influential artists of her generation, Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Her work is integral to the conceptual approach to photo-based art that began taking shape in the late 1970s, particularly by artists in New York City known as the Pictures Generation. Cindy Sherman first gained widespread critical recognition for “Untitled Film Stills”, the series that she commenced shortly after moving to New York in 1977. Comprising 70 images, the work was the artist’s first major artistic statement and defined her approach. With Sherman herself as model wearing a range of costumes and hairstyles, her black and white images captured the look of 1950s and 60s Hollywood, film noir, B movies and European art-house films. Building on that layer of artifice, the fictional situations she created were photographed in a way that recalls the conventions of yesterday’s cinema.  As a result, each photograph depicts its subject, namely the artist, refracted through a layer of artifice, a veneer of representation. Other key works are shown from the artist’s most important series including “Rear Screen Projections”, “Centrefolds”, “History Portraits”, “Fairy Tales”, “Sex Pictures”, “Masks”, “Headshots”, “Clowns” and “Society Portraits”.  In a revealing juxtaposition, Ingres’s celebrated portrait of Madame Moitessier has been borrowed especially for the exhibition and is displayed alongside Sherman’s version of that historic painting.    Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Cindy Sherman has captured herself in a range of guises and personas which are at turns amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting. To create her photographs, she assumes multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress. With an arsenal of wigs, costumes, makeup, prosthetics, and props, Sherman has deftly altered her physique and surroundings to create a myriad of intriguing tableaus and characters, from screen siren to clown to aging socialite. A range of source material from the artist’s studio is shown in order to provide unprecedented insights into her working processes.

Info: Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street, Vancouver, Duration: 23/10/19-8/3/20, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 10:00-17:00, Tue 10:00-21:00, www.vanartgallery.bc.ca