Cindy Sherman — Photo Elysée, Lausanne
After being showcased at the Hauser & Wirth gallery in New York, photographer Cindy Sherman is now featured at Photo Elysée in Lausanne with a new series of portraits that continue the exploration of her representation through fragmented elements borrowing from both art history and mass culture. A staggering and dizzying tour de force that delights while emphasizing the artist’s significance in the history of contemporary art, which we invite you to discover through images.
Having redefined the standards of fine art photography for about four decades and anticipated the upcoming explosion of self-representation through images, Cindy Sherman has never ceased her exploration and has not abandoned the practice of self-portraiture that has constituted the core of her work. While irony seemed to take precedence over invention in some of her recent works, this latest striking and remarkably effective series reconnects with the inventive aspect of satire and the ambiguous emotion in the grotesque.
Untitled, with no other words than the accompanying quote, “When I’m shooting, I’m trying to get to a point where I’m basically not recognizing myself”, the series rigorously juxtaposes the passionate expressions of close-up faces, with a metronome-like precision. There, in the external variety and internal derangement of emotions, character and person blend for what they represent in common as icons, a status the artist has acquired through abstraction.
An astonishing and finally acknowledged ability to thwart the face, not only to merge her identity with the double but to truly integrate this double into the representation of the disarticulated and deconstructed model that is Cindy Sherman’s face. The very face that surpasses her and belongs to us all.
Cindy Sherman, Photo Elysée, Lausanne, from March 29 to August 04, 2024
