Few contemporary artists have reinvented the medium of photography like Cindy Sherman. Behind the lens she is a conceptual mastermind, completely in control of her fearless vision; in front of the camera, she is her own most malleable subject. Celebrating her genius and revealing her newest bodies of work, “Cindy Sherman at the Fondation Louis Vuitton” is Sherman’s first exhibition in France in 14 years and comes hot off the heels of her recent major show at the National Gallery in London last year. After the highly anticipated exhibition was delayed due to COVID-19 this spring, its September 23 opening (with a live virtual press viewing on the same day) proves the show was well worth the wait.
The Fondation Louis Vuitton is hosting the first show dedicated to Cindy Sherman since her 2006 solo exhibition at the Jeu de Paume. “Cindy Sherman at Fondation Louis Vuitton” (initially scheduled for April 2 to August 31, 2020) brings together some 170 works by the artist produced between 1975 and 2020 – more than 300 images from series including Untitled film stills, Rear Screen Projections, Fashion, History Portraits, Disasters, Headshots, Clowns, Society Portraits, Murals, and Flappers, as well as a new set of images presenting male figures and couples.
In a scenography designed in close collaboration with Cindy Sherman, this presentation covers her entire career while also focusing on works she has created since the beginning of the last decade, including a series of very recent and previously unseen works. Her portraits, in which she stages herself and embodies various characters are all questions about identity and today’s imagery.
Cindy Sherman was born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and lives and works in New York. Considered one of the most influential artists of her generation, she came to prominence in the late 1970s with a group of artists known as the Pictures Generation.
Her 2012 retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, traveled to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Dallas Museum of Art. Additional recent exhibitions include Fosun Foundation, Shanghai; the inaugural exhibition at the Broad Museum, Los Angeles; Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia; and Astrup Fearnley Museum, Oslo.
Sherman has participated in four Venice Biennales, co-curating a section at the 55th exhibition in 2013. Additionally, her work has been included in five iterations of the Whitney Biennial, two Biennales of Sydney, and the 1983 Documenta. She is the recipient of the 2020 Wolf Prize in Arts and has also been awarded the Praemium Imperiale, an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
