FOMU presents Belgium’s first major solo of the American artist Cindy Sherman. Featuring more than 100 works from the 1970s to the present, the exhibition offers an exciting overview of this leading contemporary artist’s work.
Spanning five decades of work divided over multiple floors, the exhibition Anti-Fashion dives deeper into Sherman’s fascination for fashion and the nexus between her independent work and commissions in the fashion industry. Since the 1980s she has worked regularly with leading fashion houses including Comme des Garçons, John Galliano and Balenciaga and fashion magazines such as Vogue, Interview and Harper’s Bazaar. With no interest in glamorous fashion shoots, she creates provocative photos featuring figures that could hardly be called beautiful, thus calling established ideals of beauty into question.
In her photographs, Cindy Sherman (b. 1954) looks at identity as a construct, exploring the ways in which women are depicted in mass media. She has served as her own model since the 1970s. In make-up, costumed and disguised, she continually occupies a new identity, taking inspiration from the endless visual clichés on offer in film, television, fashion, magazines, art history and the internet. She exaggerates stereotypes to absurd and even grotesque dimensions to expose rigid conceptions of gender, beauty and ageing. Each time anew, Sherman subjects dominant visual patterns to a critical investigation, always in step with the zeitgeist and continually surprising the viewer with her characters and subjects. With humour and intelligence, she confronts us with reflections of ourselves.
Also on view is a presentation of Early Works 1975 – 1980 that sheds light on some of Sherman’s main motivations and ideas. It includes experimental works from her student years and her iconic series Untitled Film Stills, which led to her international breakthrough in the late 1970s.
Cindy Sherman - Anti-Fashion is realised by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in cooperation with Cindy Sherman’s studio in New York and her gallery Hauser & Wirth.
Exhibition Date: 28.09.2024 - 02.02.2025
Main Image: Untitled #414, 2003, Chromogenic color print © Cindy Sherman,Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Anna Melnykova, "Palace of Labor (palats praci), architector I. Pretro, 1916", shot with analog Canon camera, 35 mm Fuji film in March 2022.
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