Double Feature
25 November – 04 February 2022
Opening reception: Thursday, November 24, 6–8:30pm
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Sébastien Bertrand is pleased to present two shows by two institutional artists: photographer Richard Kern (1954, USA) and painter Walter Robinson (1950, USA). It is Kern’s fourth show at the gallery and Robinson’s third. This “double feature” – two exhibitions for the price of one, as it were – opens a dialogue between two major contributors to the New York art scene, who both explore the dimensions of fetishism, power, and sexual desire through a series of portraits representative of their respective body of work.
Richard Kern first came to prominence as part of the cultural explosion in the East Village, New York, in the 1980s with erotic and experimental films. He was deeply interested in the aesthetics of extreme sex, violence, and perversion. It is, however, the photographic image imbued with a provocative spirit that became emblematic of his art. The show features a selection of shots from the early 1990s of women holding guns. Two large unique black and white prints are presented alongside a series of five colored photos.
Notorious attributes of daring erotic fantasies, firearms titillate as much as they intimidate. In constructed and studied poses, the models do not seem to be caught by surprise. Either looking directly at the camera or feigning indifference, they are very aware of being photographed and seem to be yearning to appear. Far from being ingenues, Kern’s models seem to own their sexuality, balancing the power scales between themselves and the viewer.
A prolific painter and well-known art critic, Walter Robinson is considered a pioneer of the Picture Generation. In his practice, he explores the mechanisms of desire, from materialistic to paradigmatic, through image appropriation. The show features a collection of new works from his Romance series, which typically comprises portraits of women or embracing couples with dramatic cliché expressions, crime scenes or, in this case, doctors and nurses. This medical ensemble includes six paintings of identical format, but each standing independently. From the post-war-looking nurse to the sparky Instagram model and the horror movie character clutching a bloody heart, each holds its own aesthetics and narrative.
The Scalpel, Walter Robinson, 2022, Acrylic on canvas, 122 x 91,5 (48 x 36 in.)
Jackie with Uzi, Richard Kern, 1990. C-Print, Edition of 1/3, 50,8 x 60,9 cm (20 x 24 in.)
“Science meets the subconscious in the doctor’s office. Medicine promises health and wellness as it enters the realm of the fetish. Carnality flows from a mechanical reality of bones, nerves and viscera as it explores new dimensions of sexual desire. Human touch, hands and tools pressing on the skin, penetrating into the passive body, gleaming and sterile and dirtied and disposable, private and personal, is it any wonder that the exam room is a site of untrammeled fantasy? The body is ours but we feel its tyranny. The mind is ours but we cannot control it. Oh doctor! Oh nurse!”
1990
C-Print Mounted on dibond
Edition 1/3
50,8 x 60,9 cm / (20 x 24 in.)