Artist: Amalia Ulman
Exhibition title: Jenny’s at JENNY’S
Venue: Jenny’s, New York, US
Date: January 28 – March 4, 2023
Photography: Joerg Lohse / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Jenny’s, New York
Note: The exhibition’s check list is available here
Sardi’s Restaurant opened on March 5, 1927, on 44th Street. It quickly became a Broadway institution. Vincent Sardi wanted to imitate a jazz-age Parisian nightclub, Zelli’s, which covered its walls with caricatures of the artists, musicians, and agents who were its regulars. Sardi’s would make its own composite portrait of New York’s theatre scene.
The first official Sardi’s caricaturist was Alex Gard, a Russian exile. Sardi and Gard signed a contract that provided a meal a day in Sardi’s for Alex Gard in return for his caricatures. It was stipulated that Sardi could not complain about the caricatures and Gard could not complain about the food. Gard produced 720 caricatures for the restaurant’s walls by the time he died in 1948, collapsing in the Times Square subway station.
Sardi’s tradition of caricatures continues today, in the same location where it began. Three official caricaturists have succeeded Gard; today, over 1,200 portraits line the restaurant’s walls, with about 20 added each year. Most of them are of actors.
Amalia Ulman (b. 1989, Buenos Aires, Argentina) lives and works in New York, NY. She studied at Central Saint Martins in London and Universidad Laboral de Gijón, Spain. She has exhibited her work internationally at venues such as Tate Modern, London; KWM Art Center, Beijing; Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai; Fondazione Prada, Milan; Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Denmark; Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland; Whitechapel Gallery, London; LUMA Foundation, Zurich; and numerous others. El Planeta, Ulman’s debut feature film premiered at Sundance in 2021.
