Rachel Harrison
Fake Titel
Linder
Woman/Object
7 June–4 August 2013
kestnergesellschaft
Goseriede 11
30159 Hanover
Germany
T +49 511 70120 16
F + 49 511 70120 20
Rachel Harrison: Fake Titel
The kestnergesellschaft is delighted to present a solo exhibition of Rachel Harrison (b. 1966, New York). Considered one of the most influential sculptors of her generation, Harrison simultaneously undermines and reaffirms multiple layers of sculptural histories, employing slapstick humor and a sense of tragicomedy.
The exhibition presents a selection from three distinct bodies of work. This includes sculptures and drawings from Harrison’s exhibition The Help (2012), the architecturally scaled installation Incidents of Travel in Yucatan (2011) and the suite of photographs titled Sunset Series (2000–2012).
The sculptures and drawings from The Help examine the entagled roles of the artist, the muse, and the help. The title comes from the photograph taken by the artist of the maintenance door to Duchamp’s final work Étant Donnés. Harrison combines found objects, often of a banal or domestic nature, with abstract forms. Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, a mixed-media installation including a wall of pedestals, autonomous sculptures, and video, raises a number of anthropological and political questions. Aside from references to the work of Marcel Broodthaers, as well as Mesoamerican ballcourts, the expansive installation also reflects on larger issues of cultural identity and ownership. The Sunset Series, presented in its entirety for the first time, comprises thirty-one photographs of a single source image, a photograph of a sunset. In each photograph in the series, shot on 35mm film, the artist physically manipulates the found snapshot to create a new image.
The exhibition at the kestnergesellschaft is a cooperation with the S.M.A.K. in Gent, where it will be shown subsequently.
The show is accompanied by a catalogue designed by Surface with texts by Diedrich Diederichsen, Susanne Figner, Martin Germann, Alex Kitnick, Veit Görner and Philippe Van Cauteren.
Linder: Woman/Object
The kestnergesellschaft is presenting the first institutional solo exhibition by Linder Sterling in Germany. The artist, known as “Linder,” is one of the protagonists of British late-1970s punk. With around 200 works, the exhibition in Hanover conveys an extensive overview of her varied output.
Linder’s artistic practice has always covered art, music, dance and fashion, and unites various media, such as collage, photography, video and performance. With her uncompromising feminist approach, she questions socially coded and culturally rooted ideas about gender and the sexual marketing of the female body. Since the beginning of her career Linder, has drawn from the inexhaustible source of home-making and porn magazines, which she puts together in Dada-like collages. The construction of social identities is reflected in Linder’s own self-staging, whether as the subject of her self-portraits or in the musical and choreographed performances that she develops for museums and theatres.
Linder Sterling was born in Liverpool as Linda Mulvey in 1954. At the end of the 1970s she was a key figure in the culturally explosive period of punk and post-punk, along with bands such as Buzzcocks, Magazine, Joy Division or The Smiths and its singer Morrisssey, with whom she is still linked in friendship and artistic collaboration. One of her most well-known works was the legendary cover of the Buzzcocks’ single “Orgasm Addict,” which showed a naked woman with grinning mouths on her breasts and an iron in place of a head. In 1978 she was a co-founder of the post-punk group Ludus, whose singer she remained until the band split up in 1983. She caused a furore in 1982 by appearing—a quarter of a century before Lady Gaga—in a dress made of scraps of poultry. Linder’s work has become internationally known in recent years through presentations at important institutions such as the ICA in London, the Tate or with a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1, New York.
The retrospective at the kestnergesellschaft is a cooperation with the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, where the exhibition was shown in spring.
For further information: www.kestnergesellschaft.de
