Yancey Richardson Gallery is showing Facsimile by Sharon Core until April 12, 2025. The exhibition is accompanied by this text:
Through the meticulous recreation of historical still-life paintings, along with more recent artworks rendered through the medium of photography, Sharon’s work explores the tension between reality and its photographic representation. In Facsimile, she expands these themes by subverting her usual process. Rather than reproducing painted still-lifes through photography, she has instead turned to Irving Penn’s iconic Flowers series – a masterful collection of photographic still-lifes – and reinterpreted them through painting. This ambitious project both deepens and reframes Sharon’s exploration of the still-life genre by posing questions not only about photography in the digital age, but about material specificity and the status of reproduction.
At the center of Facsimile is a hand-made reproduction of Penn’s 1980 book Flowers, which originated from a commission for Vogue for its annual Christmas edition in 1967. Each year from 1967 to 1973, Penn focused on a different flower – beginning with tulips and moving on to poppies, peonies, roses and other blooms – capturing their ephemeral beauty in various states of perfection and decay. In 1980, these images were compiled into the popular and widely available book Flowers, published by Harmony Books (now out of print).
Sharon resurrects and reimagines the book as a tactile, meticulously handcrafted object that visitors are invited to handle. Alongside this edition, the artist presents a selection of her 73 hand-painted recreations of the original photographs, displayed throughout the gallery to offer a closer look at her reinterpretations of the original works. Rather than a departure, we might see this as a return for Sharon, who originally trained as a painter. The interplay between painting and photography has always been central to her practice and Facsimile brings this dialogue into sharper focus.
Sharon Core : Facsimile
Until April 12, 2025
Yancey Richardson
525 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
www.yanceyrichardson.com
