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Judith Bernstein at Paul Kasmin Gallery

January 31, 2018

Artist: Judith Bernstein

Exhibition title: Money Shot

Venue: Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York, US

Date: January 18 – March 3, 2018

Photography: Diego Flores / images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York

Paul Kasmin Gallery is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Judith Bernstein, who has joined the gallery’s roster of artists. The exhibition, entitled Money Shot, is on view from January 18 to March 3, 2018 at 293 Tenth Avenue and features eight new large-scale paintings that emphatically continue the artist’s incendiary political critique of the current Trump administration. In the artist’s words, “I am showing Trump for what he is: a fool, a monster, a jester, a sexist, a racist. Donald Trump is a con artist, using the White House as his own personal cash machine.”

Since graduating from Yale in 1967, Judith Bernstein has developed a reputation as one of the most unwaveringly provocative artists of her generation. Steadfast in her cultural, political and social critique for over 50 years, Bernstein surged into art world prominence in the early 1970s with her monumental charcoal drawings of penis-screw hybrids; early incarnations of which were exhibited at AIR Gallery; Brooks Jackson Iolas Gallery, New York; Brooklyn Museum; and MoMA P.S. 1, among other institutions. In reviewing Bernstein’s 2012-2013 solo exhibition at the New Museum in New York, Ken Johnson, critic at The New York Times, referred to these works as “bravura performances of draftsmanship” and “masterpieces of feminine protest.”

Money Shot will focus on new paintings from Bernstein’s Anti-Trump series following The Birth of the Universe paintings, which she began in 2011. Characterized by overt sexual iconography that is at once humorous and grotesque, the compositions also incorporate reinvented slang and catchphrases that eliminate any notion of ambiguity. The works in Money Shot also mark a return to the artist’s use of highly saturated, fluorescent paint—a material she first experimented with in the late 1960s.

Major paintings from Bernstein’s iconic The Birth of the Universe series have recently been exhibited worldwide at institutions including the New Museum, New York; Kunsthall Stavanger, Norway; Touchstones Rochdale, UK; Studio Voltaire, London; and galleries such as Mary Boone Gallery, New York; The Box LA, Los Angeles; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York; Pilar Corrias Gallery, London; Karma International, Zürich; Petzel Gallery, New York; Maruani Mercier, Brussels; and Venus, Los Angeles.

In October 2017, Bernstein opened a solo exhibition at The Drawing Center in New York. Commissioned specifically for the exhibition, Judith Bernstein: Cabinet of Horrors focuses on a diverse series of new works on paper realized during the aftermath of Donald J. Trump being elected president in January 2017.