Hauser & Wirth Brings Together a Joint Exhibition on Maria Lassnig and Cindy Sherman
On view at the institution’s St. Moritz location.
Hauser & Wirth is presenting the first joint exhibition of work between Maria Lassnig and Cindy Sherman. Housed at the institution’s St. Moritz location, the self-titled show is curated by Maria Lassnig Foundation chairman, Peter Pakesch, and explores each artists unique take on female identity.
Although both figures were separated by more than a generation, Lassnig and Sherman played a pivotal role in pushing the conversation regarding gender, identity and the body in the canons of 20th and 21st century art. The exhibition opens by exploring the role of the mother, where in Hurra – ein Junge! (Hooray, It’s a Boy!), Lassnig imagines herself as Sphinx-like figure with a baby-esque cyclops life form between her legs. Through color and composition, the artist reflects her inner pyschological state, which she once coined as “body awareness.”
Where Lassnig’s work is an internal exploration, Sherman has built a career through satirical self-depictions that often subvert female stereotypes found across society. In once such portrait, Untitled (1989), the artist is shown holding a baby in a Renaissance fashion, where she is wearing a wig and has a prosthetic breast to which is left out and open for the viewer to see.
The exhibition continues on through an exploration of clowns — an approach that shows the dichtomy between the exterior persona and the inner psychology of Sherman’s subject. To conclude the show, there are several works by both artists centering around the theme of sex and the couple — where the artists ruminate on the body as an eerily fractured entity. “Maria Lassnig & Cindy Sherman” is on view at Hauser & Wirth St. Mortiz until February 5, 2022.
Elsewhere, Phaidon chronicles the development of the Yves Saint Laurent Museum Marrakech.
