Katie Herzog – Transtextuality (SB 48)
Night Gallery
2276 East 16th Street,
Los Angeles, CA 90021
June 29 – August 3
For her Night Gallery debut, Katie Herzog reinterprets Gerhard Richter’s “48 Portraits,” originally completed for the 1972 German Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. Transtextuality (SB 48) continues Richter’s study of the learned portrait, however instead of choosing white men of letters as Richter did, Herzog selects forty-eight transgender leaders in the fields of science, philosophy, and literature. In her title, Herzog also aligns her project with Senate Bill 48 signed by Governor Jerry Brown in 2011 requiring the inclusion of trans individuals in school textbooks. Herzog’s project, utilizing images from Wikipedia and other online sources, addresses transgender representation in the public sphere and aligns painting with interactive digital archives to investigate an aesthetic realm of social epistemology and create a new public document. In the process, the term “Men of Letters” is critically engaged to open dialogue surrounding gender, language, and the intellectual body.
