These Strangers… Painting and People at S.M.A.K.

Artists: Nicole Eisenman, Victor Man, Alice Neel, Paulina Olowska, Nicolas Party, Elizabeth Peyton, Avery Singer, Henry Taylor, Katharina Wulff

Exhibition title: These Strangers… Painting and People

Venue: S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium

Date: October 1, 2016 – January 8, 2017

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and S.M.A.K.

These Strangers… Painting and People presents the human figure in the Western painting of the last forty years. The exhibition is not a survey, but explores the oeuvres of nine artists who so far have had little or no work shown in Belgian museums. Each of these artists, who are of different generations, starts out from the tradition of the portrait and goes in great depth into viewing the model and into the look he or she returns. This results in portraits that are embedded in the personal, societal, political and cultural environment and the period in which the artists live and work.

The title of the exhibition is taken from These Strangers in a Foreign World, a poem by Emily Dickinson (1830 – 86), and accentuates the relationship with the Other:

These Strangers, in a Foreign World,
Protection asked of me –
Befriend them, lest Yourself in Heaven
Be found a Refugee –

In the course of art history, painting has evolved from the application of paint to a support as a subjective act into a complex and many-branched domain where the personal and the mass produced meet. Nowadays, painters combine handwork with industrial techniques and supplement pure imagination with images appropriated from the media and art.

The painted portrait has developed in a comparable way. It was originally intended to give a true-to-life portrayal of the subject, but it later played a crucial part in the rise of individualism and its expression. A traditional portrait shows a specific person whom the artist has actually met. It is a rendering of someone’s outward appearance, but it also says something about what the person is like and how the artist saw him or her. Portraits enable us to look at and get a sense of others, but our own ideas are reflected too. Portraits express something deep and fundamental that transcends the ordinary and momentary.

In the present network culture, where the self-image is moulded and shaped through the views of others, the internet and social media, portraits are not necessarily the result of real encounters. Artists now have unlimited access to the abundant archives of art history and the visual media on which they can draw and then, to their heart’s content, manipulate, recombine and set these images in new contexts. They no longer sketch the human figure as an individual, but as a metaphor for human existence in our complex globalised world. At the same time, they ask pertinent questions about such concepts as originality, identity, gender, subjectivity and consciousness (of the self).

Nicole Eisenman, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Nicole Eisenman, Biergarten, 2007, Collection of Joshua Gessel & Yoel Kremin, Marina – Herzliya; Courtesy the Artist and Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Photo : Jens Ziehe

Nicole Eisenman, Devil, 2007, Private collection, Courtesy the Artist and Galerie, Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Photo : Jens Ziehe

Nicole Eisenman, Le Kiss Deux, 2015, Private collection, Courtesy the Artist and Galerie , Barbara Weiss, Berlin, Photo : Jens Ziehe

Victor Man, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Victor Man, Self-Portrait at Father’s Death, 2016
Courtesy the Artist and Galeria Plan B, Berlin and Cluj

Victor Man, Grafting or Lermontov dansant comme Saint-Sébastien, 2014-2015, Courtesy The Artist and Galerie Neu, Berlin

Victor Man, K, 2014
Courtesy the Artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels

Alice Neel, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Alice Neel, Ron Kajiwara, 1971
The Estate of Alice Neel and Xavier Hufkens, Brussels

Alice Neel, Anne-Marie and Georgie, 1982
FWA, Foundation for Women Artists, Antwerp-Belgium

Alice Neel, Richard in the Era of Corporation, 1978 – 1979
The Estate of Alice Neel, Image © Estate of Alice Neel

Nicolas Party, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Paulina Olowska, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Paulina Olowska, Girl in Portobello Road Market Offers for Sale Dresses She Has Made, 2012, Andreas Hecker, Hong Kong; Courtesy the Artist and Simon Lee Gallery, London

Paulina Olowska, Granny, 2012,
Private collection, Courtesy the Artist and , Simon Lee Gallery, London

Paulina Olowska, Untitled (for Ulrike Ottinger), 2012
Graham Collection, UK; Courtesy the Artist and Simon Lee Gallery, London

Elizabeth Peyton, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Elizabeth Peyton, Fred Hughes at Max’s Kansas City (after Billy Name), 1995, FWA, Foundation for Women Artists, Antwerp

Elizabeth Peyton, Flower Ben (two), 2002, Boros Collection, Berlin

Elizabeth Peyton, Sara, 1995
Private Collection, Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin

Avery Singer, installation view at S.M.A.K., 2016

Avery Singer, Eleonore, 2015
Collection Oehmen Germany, Courtesy the Artist; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, Photo : Michael Underwood

Avery Singer, Lee Krasner, 2014
Privatsammlung Bonn, Courtesy the Artist; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, Photo : Jörg Lohse

Avery Singer, Untitled, 2015
Collection Majerus Luxembourg, Courtesy the Artist; Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler, Berlin; Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York, Photo : Michael Underwood