From February 17 through April 18, 2015, Gagosian Gallery presents “In the Studio: Photographs” at 980 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10075. Curated by Peter Galassi, former Chief Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art, the exhibition includes over 150 photographs, by forty artists, spanning from the origin of the medium to the late twentieth century, and is divided into three particularly rich themes within the broader subject of images of the artist’s studio. The first of these looks at the studio as an arena for “Pose and Persona,” an artificial zone for the display of the body, a section that includes artists ranging from Eadweard Muybridge, Brassaï, and Walker Evans to Richard Avedon, Lee Friedlander, and Cindy Sherman. The nudes and portraits assembled here are exemplary because they acknowledge the role of the setting, or accentuate the deliberateness of a pose, or highlight the purposeful enactment of a persona. In the second section, “Four Studios,” in-depth selections of photographs by Constantin Brancusi, André Kertesz (photographing Piet Mondrian’s Paris studio), Lucas Samaras, and Josef Sudek show the studio as a total aesthetic environment. For these photographers (as well as Mondrian), the studio was home as well as workplace and became an all-encompassing aesthetic environment—an embodiment of a unique artistic identity and perhaps an instrument for realizing it. In the third and final section, “An Embarrassment of Images,” photographs by John O’Reilly, Robert Rauschenberg, Weegee, and more, show the studio—usually a wall of the studio—as a site for accumulating and displaying images.
The exhibition accompanies “In the Studio: Paintings,” curated by John Elderfield, Chief Curator Emeritus of Painting and Sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art, at Gagosian Gallery, 522 West 21st Street, New York, NY 10075. Also on view from February 17 through April 18, the exhibition includes over fifty paintings and works on paper by nearly forty artists.
Gagosian Gallery will publish a two-volume, fully illustrated and scholarly catalogue to accompany the exhibitions. The publications include new essays by Elderfield and Galassi and will be distributed worldwide by Phaidon Press.
EXHIBITION
In the Studio: Photographs
February 17 – April 18, 2015
Gagosian Gallery
980 Madison Avenue
NY 10075
New York
Curated by Peter Galassi
