Curated by Reine Hauser Luis Cruz Azaceta I JohnCopoulos Janieta Eyre * Marcia Hillis - Josh Iguchi Rob0 Kocan Sasha YungJu Lee Leone & Macdonald Yasumasa Morimura LuLu Lo Lo Laurie Long Gabriel Martinez Mary McCleary Randy Moore Lori Nix Howardena Pindell Elise Mitchell Sanford Kenny Schachter Christina Schlesinger Cindy Sherman If VIROCODE/Andrea Mancuso and Peter D'Auria Kurt Von Voetsch March 15 - May 9,1997 Laine Whitcomb Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center 1997 Hallwalls Inc. Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center 2495 Main Street, Suite 425 Buffalo, NY 14214 716/835-7362 [email protected] http:// www.pce.net/hallwall Altered Egos is a featured project of Slow Burn, a web site for curatorial projects organized by a collective of Canadian art professionals in Toronto, Ontario. Visit the site at http://www.baritone.net/slowburn. Hallwalls is supported in part by its Members, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the ArtsLink Partnership, the County of Erie, and the City of Buffalo. AlteredAgos was made possible by a grant for curatorial proposals in the visual arts from the New York State Council on the Arts which was administered by the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance. Catalogue design by Chet Kozlowski allwalls Contemporary Arts Center is very pleased to present Altered Egos, an exhibi- tion of 22 artists and artists collaboratives from North America, Europe and Asia who reexamine identity by transforming them- selves or their models. In testing and tran- scending the confines of identity, the artists examineH their own personal or cultural histories, the cult of fame, and the psychology of the desire to be someone else. Each chooses to magically step into another skin and anoth- er world; to transform one personal reality into another; to become their own heroes or nemeses; to live in a moment of great power. Such alchemy is performed in a different way in the works by all of the artists represented here, in what we hope to be a comprehensive look at some of the remarkable work on this theme. This exhibition has been guest curated by independent curator and critic Reine Hauser of Buffalo. Sylvie Fortin of Ottawa worked with Hauser to develop an essay on the exhibition. Altered Egos is a part of a long series of guest curated projects at Hallwalls which in recent years includes Buttered Side Up curated by Giles Lyons with an essay by n trod u ctio n Karen Emenheiser, Bereft curated by Sylvie Fortin, Object My thanks to all of the artists for their generosity and Choice curated by Ken Gonzales Day and Andrew Perchuck, vision; to Reine Hauser for being the guest curator for this and The Abortion Project curated by Chrysanne Stathacos project and bringing all of her wisdom and hard work to this and Kathe Burkehart. Guest curated exhibitions and com- project; to essayist Sylvie Fortin for collaborating as essay- missioned essays offer an opportunity to look at the ist for the exhibition; Chet Kozlowski for his remarkable skill breadth of contemporary art through the eyes of many indi- and patience in designing the exhibition invitation and cata- viduals; and to create a multitude of voices within Hallwalls' logue; and to the interns, volunteers, staff, and board of Exhibitions Program. directors of Hallwalls. Thank you to everyone who offered housing to the artists for the exhibition opening, and to all Thank you to those who loaned works for the exhibition: the people who volunteer their time and talent year round the artists, Metro Pictures, The Kitchen, Luring Augustine to make visual arts programming at Hallwalls a reality. Gallery, Adair Margo Gallery, Garnet Press Gallery, Cristinerose Gallery, JillS. Medvedow and Richard Kazis. Finally, I would like to thank the Visual Arts Program at the New York State Council on the Arts for offering the grant for curatorial proposals in the visual arts, and to the Delaware Valley Arts Alliance for their skillful administration of this program. Such opportunities as these are welcome for orga- nizations such as Hallwalls, and we salute the vision and the effort that made it a reality. Sara Kellner, Visual Arts Director Hallwalls ContemporaryArts Center "I am large, I contain multitudes" day self-images, as does Lois Evans in this exhibition, becoming his exhibition is about fact and fiction, or fiction as fact, or fact as fiction. Let me be clear. So I'll quote someone else : "...we are not in search of sources or selves, like Christina Schlesjn origins, but structures of signification: underneath each picture there is always another pi~ture."~I sus- about herthen. t? pect that statement applies to the work in this exhibi- tion, and I suspect it also applies to ourselves. Which These portraits are concerned with the manipu-Hffion, expto is,T I assume, why these particular artists are making what they and imptotation of the self as someone else. This fictionaH are making. And what draws us to it. of the identity vwill provide endless hours of speorfatteaifer concerned with the various psychological schools of thought;\ , This is not to say that the artists whose work is seen in this exhi- they may be equally interesting for those concerned with bition are uncovering layers in their work; rather they are pre- of feminism, sexualitjes andlor power. After all, it was Fogcauit,, senting themselves or another person in simultaneity. Less is not who said : ".J have sought to study - it is my current wark - more; more is more. Nothing here is stripped bare, unlike the way a human being turns himself into a sub)'ect."4 Duchamp's bride before her bachelors, even; rather each subject is added to, adorned, complicated and embellished. If each of us Defining a persona is different than creating a persona, and yet as personalities are composed of several different personas, why there is an overlapping nexus where the two become intertwined, shouldn't portraiture? Of course, it can and it does. Portraiture as in a shared algebraic set of terms. Defining is passive, efititgft:' can be many things: physical improvement, blandishments for looking at something and perhaps judgl~it.Creothg is aetiw, the wealthy, historical documentation or revisionism, religious inventive: making something up. The portraits included in iconography, confusion, clarification, citation, and invention. Jack Altered Egos contain b&Ji approaches, often-within the same Webb (of Dragnet) didn't have a clue when he said "just the work. For to look at yourself for someone else) and envision and facts, Ma'am." then create another persona necessitates taking both a step back This exhibition is virulently anti-Puritan. Its thesis is antithetical from the self and a step forward. It is this artistic two-step that I ; to the Puritan strain so central to American culture; it denies find most compe'lllng. "that powerful tendency toward uniformity of life, which today so immensely aids the capitalistic interest in the standardization of This confusion is, =Martha Stewart would say, "a good thing" production, [which] had its ideal foundation in the repudiation of and certainly intriguing. The reification of the self, the de-person- all idolatry of the flesh." And furthermore, "This was especially alization, the objectificatipn of the subjective may help us under- true in the case of decoration of the body, for instance, clothing" stand ourselves and others; then again, it may not, but I kndfdr where "all designations of an irrational attitude without objective sure it makes compelling visual objects. In the works seen fn purpose, thus not ascetic, and especially not serving the glory of this exhibition, Cindy Sherman (who tias spent twenty years God, but of man." 3 are deemed not just worthless, but danger- transforming herself in a wide variety of personas, and Ts in seme ous. Overwrought, overdone, and just too, too are just the tip of ways the heroine of this exhibition) has cast herself in a variety of the iceberg; perhaps it's the very disavowal of this aesthetic guises over the years; Yasumasa Morimura ireagirtes himself which makes us perceive the work as, by turns, disturbing, har- right out of his own culture and into ours; Lajne Whitcomb literal- rowing and funny. If what we believe in determines our behavior, ly fleshes out religious iconography; Kenny Schachter presents doesn't it also moderate how we see and what we see? And if himself as a youngster, albeit as a suffering (but not too direly) what we believe dictates our behavior, then what happens when wreck; Kurt Von Voetch transforms himself into a totem, both we believe in ourselves? And what happens when we don't? shaman and icon; Marcia Hillis playfully creates toys out of peo- ple, a form of infantile caricature; and Elise Mitchell Sanford gen- The artists in this exhibition share a desire to reexamine the per- erously allows others to select and assume a new identity as a sonality. They appropriate historical figures and depict them in personal hero. modern dress, using actual people they know (josh Iguchi and Mary McCleary both reimagine Biblical figures, in different ways, For "To destine oneself is to choose oneself. As we know, the in different media - photography and collage); they mythologize center of the self is not an item on the map of the soul; it is just themselves into a persona they may well prefer to their day-to- the thing, the person, the cause we are involved in, beyond and above everything elseÑB choosing ourselves (the centers of our self) we become what we are: this kind or that kind of person- be saying, maybe they'll just try to have several of them.