Cindy Sherman

The US American photographic artist Cindy Sherman was born on January 19, 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. From 1972 to 1976 she studied art at State College in Buffalo. Early on, the student finds the medium of painting too limited and exhausted, so she takes up photography. "I was meticulously copying other artwork, and then I realized I could just use a camera and put my time into an idea instead," says Cindy Sherman, describing her approach to the medium. Along with Richard Prince, Louise Lawler, Robert Longo and others, Cindy Sherman is one of the most important artists of the so-called Pictures Generation, who became artistically active in the 1970s and responded in their art to the omnipresent mass media, the images from advertising, film, television and magazines. In photographic self-portraits, Cindy Sherman plays with visual and cultural codes of gender, celebrity, or art. "Untitled Film Stills" - self-portraits as a construction of identity. In 1974, Cindy Sherman and fellow students Robert Longo, Charles Clough and Nancy Dwyer founded the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, which still exists today, where they organize exhibitions. In 1976, Cindy Sherman also shows her first works here and at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo. In 1977, Cindy Sherman and Robert Longo move to New York. Shortly after the move, Cindy Sherman begins her most famous series of "Untitled Film Stills" (1977-1980), 70 self-portraits for which she photographs herself dressed up and with selected props. The exhibition of this series of "Untitled Film Stills" in 1980 at the non-commercial art space The Kitchen turned out to be a great success; with the renewed presentation in the same year as the opening exhibition of the Metro Pictures Gallery in New York, Cindy Sherman achieved her international breakthrough. In 1982 and 1995 Cindy Sherman took part in the Venice Biennale. In 1982 the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam shows Cindy Sherman, in 1987 the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, in 1991 the Kunsthalle Basel. Always Cindy Sherman, in very different roles and as a large format.Cindy Sherman's photographic works are repeatedly the starting point for fundamental discussions about feminism, identity, representation and postmodernism. In 1981 she created the series "The Centerfolds", 1988-1990 "The History Portraits", 2000-2002 "The Head Shots" or 2008 "The Society Portraits". Cindy Sherman always photographs herself in very different roles and subject matter, and she shows these photos from the beginning in what was then a huge format. The later works also consciously show efforts at role-playing and masking, in that wigs have slipped, makeup is poorly applied, prosthetics are coming off, or the like. In this way, Cindy Sherman highlights the artificiality of the fake in the photograph; it becomes a metaphor for the artificiality of any identity construction. The first large-scale retrospective was organized in 1996 by the Museum Boymans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. In 2012, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles put on an exhibition of 170 photographs. A survey show of Cindy Sherman's important photographic oeuvre spanning almost fifty years will last be shown in 2021 by the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York.