Hervé Guibert and David Wojnarowicz at Fitzpatrick Gallery

Artists: Hervé Guibert and David Wojnarowicz

Exhibition title: For an early death

Curated by: Hugo Bausch Belbachir and Thomas Villemin

In collaboration with: Les Douches la Galerie (Paris) and New Galerie (Paris) and with the generous support of Christine Guibert and Marion Scemama

Venue: Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris, France

Date: January 28 – February 28, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris

While Hervé Guibert’s name was mentioned to David Wojnarowicz by close friend and collaborator Marion Scemama in 1990, the two artists never met. Falling prey to the AIDS epidemic just a few months apart from one another, between the winter of 1991 and the summer of 1992, Hervé Guibert (1955-1991) and David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992) concurrently developed a body of work during their lifetime that shared musings on the subjects of love, sexuality, illness, and death.

***

From the time of their youth, both artists aspire to a life pursuit of writing and photography. In 1977, at the young age of twenty-one, Hervé Guibert inaugurates the photography column for the national newspaper Le Monde. Publishing texts about the greatest names in photography, he emancipates himself from the sole mnemonic use of his father’s Rollei 35, and rubs shoulders with the French intellectual elite; among them, Michel Foucault. In the philosopher’s apartment on rue Vaugirard, the two engage in exchanges ranging from literature, photography, love, sex, and drugs. Guibert’s images reveal, among other things, a desire for male bodies – that of his lovers Thierry, Vincent, and others. Clotted in intimate circumscriptions, the beauty of these images is inhabited by a certain melancholia and fear, contrasting subjects revealed in La Mort Propagande2. In this !rst novel, the author reports on a body thrown into pleasure, agony, and then death.

That same year in New York, David Wojnarowicz tears Rimbaud’s face from a poster of Ernest Pignon-Ernest. Turning the cut-out into a mask, he wears it, then asks his lovers and friends to wear it – quoting Rimbaud’s ‘I’ is Another: an act that operates as an extension of his writing eorts. By putting on the mask, he assumes the ‘I’ and its demon. He is singular and plural at the same time; a proud child survivor of abandonment and violence.

In 1980 he meets Peter Hujar. Following a short romance, Hujar becomes a spiritual father who orients Wojnarowicz towards artmaking, speci!cally photography. The artist begins to document, with precarious technical means, his travels, as well as the creative community of the East Village scene, among whom are Kathy Acker and Nan Goldin. At Pier 34 – a deserted hangar he discovers while cruising and where he would gather an important group of artists and personalities – Wojnarowicz would document a !ery and militant underground culture, raging against the homophobic governance of the Reagan administration.

The middle of the 1980s was a crucial time in the destiny of these two artists. Michel Foucault, in 1984, and Peter Hujar, in 1987, both die due to AIDS complications. From then on, death, a lifelong obsession for Hervé Guibert, becomes an inescapable reality. He sees it with the decline of his friend and will con#ate it with his own, through the character of Muzil in À l’ami qui ne m’a pas sauvé la vie3. In his images, death shadows the face and empties the gaze of his self-portraits. While he documents the self-destruction of the early negatives made during his youth, he seems to tame death in the lens.

For Wojnarowicz, death also occurs at close intervals, with the announcement of his own diagnosis. He moves to Hujar’s studio, where he !nally develops his prints with professional equipment. From a San Sebastian riddled with American missiles to a series of captive, dying, or cadaverous animals, Wojnarowicz puts his fear, his rage, and his fury at the service of the !ght against the silence of the political establishment, in the face of the growing epidemic. With Act-Up and Gran Fury, he will emerge as a central !gure in the New York activist scene.

Face to face, despite the disparity of their artistic and political backgrounds, Hervé Guibert and David Wojnarowicz oer us two narratives that apprehend a premature death. Together, they cannot escape the Rimbaldian law: ‘Criminals disgust like castrated men: I am intact, and I don’t care.’4

– Hugo Bausch Belbachir, Thomas Villemin

Hervé Guibert and David Wojnarowicz, For an early death, 2023, exhibition view, Fitzpatrick Gallery, Paris

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled, 1988-1989, Vintage gelatin silver print, 20 x 25 cm (framed) 7.9 x 9.8 in (framed), Collection Marion Scemama, Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Rimbaud in New York), 1978-1980 Vintage silver print, Unique artist proof, 25 x 30 cm (framed), 9 7/8 x 11 3/4 in (framed), 25 x 30 cm (print), 9 7/8 x 11 3/4 in (print), Collection Jean-Pierre Delage, Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York

Hervé Guibert, Autoportrait au Pantin, rue du Moulin-Vert, 1981, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire, 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, La sacristie, Santa Catarina, 1980, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire, 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, Vincent, main torse, 1985-1986, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire, 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (Rimbaud in New York), 1978-1980, Vintage silver print, Unique artist proof, 25 x 30 cm (framed), 9 7/8 x 11 3/4 in (framed), 25 x 30 cm (print), 9 7/8 x 11 3/4 in (print), Collection Jean-Pierre Delage, Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York

Hervé Guibert, Kafka, 1980, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, Thierry Lisant, 1982, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, L’ami, 1979, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire, 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled, 1988-1989, Vintage gelatin silver print 20 x 25 cm (framed) 7.9 x 9.8 in (framed), Collection Marion Scemama, Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled, 1988-1989, Vintage gelatin silver print 20 x 25 cm (framed), 7.9 x 9.8 in (framed), Collection Marion Scemama, Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York

David Wojnarowicz, Untitled (self-portrait), 1988-1989, Vintage gelatin silver print, 20 x 25 cm (framed), 7.9 x 9.8 in (framed), Collection Marion Scemama, Courtesy of the Estate of David Wojnarowicz and PPOW, New York

Hervé Guibert, Autoportrait main sur le front, 1988-1989, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Pari

Hervé Guibert, Destruction des négatifs de jeunesse, rue du Moulin-Vert, 1987, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, Munich, 1983, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, Thierry debout, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 32 x 42 cm (framed), 12 5/8 x 16 1/2 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris

Hervé Guibert, Autoportrait allongé, Rome, 1988, Exhibition print by G. Geneste, La Chambre Noire 42 x 32 cm (framed), 16 1/2 x 12 5/8 in (framed), 14.9 x 22.7 cm (image), 5.86 x 8.9 in (image), Credit Christine Guibert, Courtesy of Les Douches la Galerie, Paris