Diane Arbus “Untitled”
November 2—December 15, 2018
537 West 20th St, NYC
David Zwirner presents Diane Arbus “Untitled”, a series of sixty-six images by the famous 20th-century photographer opening on November 2nd. Inaugurating their collaboration as co-representatives of The Estate of Diane Arbus, David Zwirner and Fraenkel Gallery will show these images together for the first time.
Having an affinity for subjects such as transvestites, strippers, dwarves, and marginalized people, Arbus’s series “Untitled” focuses on people with developmental disabilities.
The “Untitled” photographs—direct, enigmatic portraits of the residents of these facilities—are a radical departure from the bold, confrontational images upon which Arbus’s formidable reputation largely stands. Though Arbus had contemplated making a book of these photographs, the majority of them remained unknown until 1995, more than twenty years after her death, when Aperture published Diane Arbus: Untitled.
Diane Arbus is one of the most widely recognized photographers of the 20th century. Her photographs mostly focus on the marginalized, but she also photographs people as ordinary as children, mothers, couples, old people, and middle-class families.
In his 2003 New York Times Magazine article, “Arbus Reconsidered,” Arthur Lubow states, “She was fascinated by people who were visibly creating their own identities—cross-dressers, nudists, sideshow performers, tattooed men, the nouveau riche, the movie-star fans—and by those who were trapped in a uniform that no longer provided any security or comfort.”
Lisa Yuskavage “New Paintings”
November 8—December 15, 2018
34 East 69th Street
Lisa Yuskavage’s highly original approach to figurative painting has challenged conventional understandings of the genre.
Her new exhibition, “New Paintings,” is composed of charged depictions of often interlocking, interdependent male and female figures developed out of the artist’s series of “symbiotic” portraits from the early 2000s that paired two female figures to evoke a sense of a dual manifestation of a single personality.
Babie Brood: Small Paintings 1985–2018
November 8—December 15, 2018
533 West 19th St. NYC
In conjunction with “New Paintings,” Yuskavage will show a series of small paintings in David Zwirner’s Chelsea location.
The largest presentation of these works to date, the exhibition will include key examples from each of Yuskavage’s most important series, spanning the full breadth of her influential career, from the mid-1980s to new, never before exhibited paintings.
Variously and often concurrently based on the artist’s imagination, maquettes, live models, and found and staged photographs, the small paintings demonstrate Yuskavage’s methodical exploration of how and from where to generate images. In Blonde Jerking Off (1995), a prime example from her early series Babies, a woman’s body materializes from monochrome mist with no counterpart in reality, her hyperbolic features animated by notions of shame and shamelessness alike.
