Sherrie Levine
Back and Forth
December 2024 - March 2025
The "miraculous transformation" of caterpillars fascinated the naturalist and artist Maria Sybilla Merian in the 17th century. Pia Fries' work schwarze blumen (black flowers) takes up the theme of metamorphosis.
"I'm interested in themes like authenticity, identity, ownership ... What do we own?" Sherrie Levine asked this question at the beginning of her artistic career in 1979, shortly after her first solo exhibition in New York. At the time, she belonged to the loose group of the Pictures Generation, young artists who questioned concepts such as original and imitation or replica in the increasing flood of mass media.
"Sherrie Levine is an extremely original artist. Her works are not plagiarisms, but original creations," says curator Kay Heymer in the catalog for the exhibition "After All" (Neues Museum Nürnberg).
Over the course of her artistic career, which now spans some 45 years, Levine has increasingly distanced herself from art theories and trends. She developed her own artistic language, which does not shy away from the morbid and grotesque - and expresses the artist's affinity for slapstick and humor.
The softening of boundaries, where "neither death nor crime exist" (Levine's own words), is also evident in the sculptures of animal skeletons and skulls, for which Sherrie Levine uses precious materials such as glass or polished bronze. False God", for example, is a replica of a freak of nature, a calf with two heads. The creepy, the thing we are afraid of, is given a new interpretation through the brilliance of the material and the perfection of the workmanship. The original is alienated, nature becomes a work of art.
The territory of slapstick
Sherrie Levine about her work
I like the territory of slapstick, where amidst general laughter neither death nor crime exists." Sherrie Levine on the group "The Three Furies" (below).
I don't think it's useful to see culture as monolithic, I'd rather see it as having many voices, some conscious and some unconscious. Which may be at odds with one another. If we are attentive to these voices we can collaborate with them to create something almost new. Sherrie Levine 1997, quoted in "Mayhem", catalog for the exhibition of the same name at the Whitney Museum of American Art NYC.
I love monochrome paintings. I think monochrome paintings are the apex of modernist painting. Sherrie Levine on paintings such as the "After Yves Klein" series shown at KiS.
It provokes answers, it does not give them
At the vernissage, Florian Waldvogel gave an insight into the work of Sherrie Levine
Florian Waldvogel, head of the Modern Collection at the Tyrolean State Museum, has been working with the American artist for a long time and has also curated exhibitions by Sherrie Levine.
"We are standing in the artist's workshop," he said, for example, about the room in which Levine's "Pyramid of Skulls" is exhibited, her photo series based on a motif by Paul Cézanne, which the French painter used as a model for many of his works. "Why a parrot?" Waldvogel then asks when looking at the bronze sculpture "Loulou" (see photo below). Because it is an intelligent bird? Yes, but above all because Levine is referring to the story by Gustave Flaubert entitled "The Simple Heart", in which this parrot plays a key role.
Sherrie Levine "bows to the classical masters in her works", Waldvogel continues. But "at the same time, she appropriates these men". In her works, Levine refers to the originals of exclusively male artists. This is also the case in her monochrome paintings "After Yves Klein" (see below). "It's always about the great masters of art history", to whom Levine responds in her works "with a wink". This can also be seen in her chessboard paintings, which reflect Marcel Duchamp's preoccupation with the game and the pattern. With her "permanent historical references", Levine creates works that provoke answers, but do not give them, concludes Florian Waldvogel.
David LaChapelle is an artist I didn't know like this before Rafael Jablonka asked me to open this exhibition. After dealing with him and this work I have to say: For me he is one of the great, one of the greatest artists of our time.
He was socialized as a Catholic like so many artists, for example Andy Warhol. Later, many, including LaChapelle, turned away from religion. What has remained, however, is the longing to produce images, which is inherent in Catholicism. This is exactly what David LaChapelle does, it seems as if he wanted to create the Bible itself with this cycle.
You can bring a bunch of morals with the Christian thought or just a voice at the right moment that says "you can't do that". This stops the policemen in the picture 'Intervention' from doing what they are doing.
LaChapelle does not make Catholic propaganda, but he shows people who set themselves free. They do it because they can. That's why, for me, these images are among the most grandiose of this genre.
Sherrie Levine
"After Walker Evans" made her famous
Sherrie Levine was born in Hazleton/Pennsylvania in 1947 and grew up in St. Louis/Missouri. She studied painting and printmaking at the University of Wisconsin and during her studies also worked with photography, papermaking, bookbinding, letterpress printing, etc. After moving to New York City, she had her first solo exhibition there in 1977. Her breakthrough came in 1981 with her work "After Walker Evans", an American photographer who documented poverty in the southern states of the USA in the 1930s.
Sherrie Levine became known to a wide audience in Europe in 1991 when her works were presented in museums in Zurich, Paris, Münster and Malmö as part of an exhibition tour. Since then, numerous gallery presentations and exhibitions have followed, including at Rafael Jablonka's Böhm Chapel in Hürth.
The Whitney Museum in New York dedicated a major solo exhibition to her in 2011 under the title "Mayhem", followed by "After All" in 2016/17, a major solo exhibition at the Neues Museum in Nuremberg.
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