The 80WSE Gallery is pleased to announce DENIM, an exhibition curated by David Rimanelli, NYU Faculty and Artforum contributor. DENIM features an eclectic mix of historical and contemporary artists including Knut Asdam, Tom Burr, VALIE EXPORT, K8 Hardy, Hanna Liden and Klara Liden, Jack Pierson, ... Read more
The 80WSE Gallery is pleased to announce DENIM, an exhibition curated by David Rimanelli, NYU Faculty and Artforum contributor. DENIM features an eclectic mix of historical and contemporary artists including Knut Asdam, Tom Burr, VALIE EXPORT, K8 Hardy, Hanna Liden and Klara Liden, Jack Pierson, Rob Pruitt, Michael Smith, Andy Warhol, and Karlheinz Weinberger.
The artists in DENIM explore the multifarious connotations of a material which began its life as a fabric for work clothes, but has become, over the past few decades, a material for fashion, both instant and high-end couture. For Rimanelli, however DENIM does not refer only to fashion but is more a a psychic material, which sheathes ideas that range from the implicitly erotic to the deeply revolutionary.
Denim’s cult status as a rebel uniform emerged in the public mind largely through
classic cinema – Marlon Brando’s Wild One, James Dean, and Marilyn Monroe in
The Misfits, and later as the preferred style for certain subcultures, for example
gay subculture, as can be seen in Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising and Kustom
Kar Kommandos; or Al Pacino in Cruising.
In the exhibition, DENIM, these filmic references mix with denim’s “high-art” associations, which have become ingrained through the ’60s image of the “artistworker,” exemplified by Robert Morris, or Carl Andre in his overalls.
The artists who complete the exhibition are equally challenging, both using and
deforming denim iconographies that have become familiar over the past few
decades. Andy Warhol who embodies the subversion of class structures and
sexuality which DENIM explores, is represented both by his 60’s avant-garde
flim, and his masss market image for the Roling Stones. In her ACTION PANTS:
GENITAL PANIC series VALIE EXPORT trades heavily on the confrontational/rebel/“anti-feminine” associations carried by denim. These
images originated as a performance that EXPORT did in a Munich cinema,wearing crotchless pants and carrying a machine gun; Karlheinz Weinberger’s
portraits of early gang members reveal the existence of an exotically costumed
60’s gang subculture in Zurch. K8 Hardy, a radical lesbian
video/photographic/performance artist, who also worked for years as a stylist for
real fashion editorials, creates send-ups of fashion photography, questioning
ideas about femininity and normative attractiveness.
The 80WSE Gallery, located on Washington Square Park is directed by artist
and NYU Steinhardt Faculty member Peter Campus. It is an extension of the
NYU/Steinhardt Art program.
