Warren Neidich: Cindy Unveiled
Opening Reception: June 18, 7-10PM

Louis V.E.S.P.
140 Jackson St, #4D
Brooklyn NY 11211

In 1986 the artist Warren Neidich, then acting as American Editor of the Belgian photography magazine Cliché visited Cindy Sherman in her studio at 51 Walker Street. The banal photographs exhibited at Louis V E.S.P were the result of this meeting. Cindy Sherman is seen without the equipment of her trade. She is without make up and with out costume. She is unmasked. She is in between acts and as such the seven photographs shot from this encounter are more about her state of readiness then her state of being. They capture her desire to be invisible in front of the camera of the other, to be something else besides that which we have become familiar with. What we know of her. What her self-portraits depict; the female impersonator of the feminized persona of the filmic still. These portraits are then contradictions to the self-portraits. They are in the Lacanian sense of the Object a, the image of lack.

James Kalm endures sweltering heat and summer ennui to bike to the center of Chelsea for this blockbuster show. The inequality of female representation within museum collections is an almost endemic refrain. While not reconciling this state of affairs, “The Female Gaze” does provide examples of some of today’s most influential and accomplished artists’ work. From stalwarts of Post-War American art like Louise Bourgeois and Joan Mitchell, to the essential Feminist works of Lynda Benglis, to the Post-Modern Conceptual works of Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer and Deborah Kass, this exhibition displays prime examples of reflective works inspired by images of women.

Cindy Sherman at Metro Pictures, New York
15 November - 23 December 2008

I enjoyed Jerry Saltz's review of the show in New York Magazine, but added the following comment:

When I saw the show, my first thought was that Cindy Sherman was being remarkably candid in depicting her female collectors. There they all are, up on the walls of Metro, the museum trustee doyennes, oil baronesses, superannuated cowgirls, Upper East Side plastic surgery queens, sexagenarian countesses and aging Foundation goddesses who have acquired Sherman photographs over the years. Or there they all are, caricatures of what she feels we think they look like. It's an homage of sorts, a jolt of recognition, bringing things full circle. John Waters seems to agree, and has been so quoted: “It’s great to see Cindy’s pictures in the same room with some of her best subjects.”