Perpetual Photo No. 210, 1989 © Allan McCollum

Exhibition on view:
March 12–April 12, 2012

Blondeau Fine Art Services
5, rue de la Muse
Genève, Switzerland
41 (0)22 544 95 95

Challenging ideas of originality, a group of appropriation artists share the common thread of relating to images in a newfound way. Earlier exhibition’s, Pictures (Artists Space, New York, 1977) and The Pictures Generation (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2009) pioneered the way for ‘appropriationist’ practices, advocating the importance of painting as a medium and the borrowed, sampled, and recycled aspects of our visual culture.

Last Exit: Pictures, curated by Lionel Bouvier, seeks to articulate the can of worms ‘re-presentation’ tends to open. Understanding the picture itself, whatever the sources used, becomes inherently important rather than attempting to absorb an alternate or lost reality beyond the image. Despite generational or aesthetic differences, the heart of this exhibition is to display pictures in every state: appropriated, displaced, painted, re-photographed, and combined.

Featured artists: Troy Brauntuch, Jack Goldstein, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Robert Longo, Allan McCollum, John Miller, Steven Parrino, Richard Prince, David Robbins, David Salle, Laurie Simmons, Alan Vega, and James Welling.

Allan McCollum contributed to Words Without Pictures. Louise Lawler is featured in Aperture issue 145. Laurie Simmons has an Aperture published book, Walking, Talking, Lying, she is featured in The New York Times Magazine Photographs, and has a print available. James Welling is featured in Aperture issue 190 and contributed to Words Without Pictures. Aperture, in association with the Cincinnati Art Museum, will publish a survey of James Welling’s work in Spring 2013.

And Should…, 1974 © James Welling

Exhibition on view:
The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984
Tuesday, April 21–Sunday, August 2, 2009
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue at 82nd Street
New York, New York
(212) 535-7710

Now on view until August is The Pictures Generation, 1974-1984. The exhibition is named after a group of artists working in New York from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, whose work and collective achievement is an important chapter in the history of contemporary art.

Coming from a generation with expanding media and consumer culture, and educated in the era of Minimalism and Conceptualism in art, the artists explore the social and psychological role of the image, and how it shapes our perceptions of ourselves and the world. The Pictures Generation 1974-1984 features the work of 30 artists and includes paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, video, installation, prints, and books.  Among the featured artists are Aperture-published Louise Lawler, Cindy Sherman, Laurie Simmons, and James Welling.