Overview
A historical body of Sturtevant’s iconic repetitions of Andy Warhol’s Marylin and flowers as well as Jasper Johns’ flags.
After having worked with Sturtevant for 25 years, Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac will present Reloaded, the first posthumous exhibition at the gallery in the Marais. This exhibition will coincide with the comprehensive survey Sturtevant: Double Trouble opening at the MoMA, New York on 9 November 2014 and later travelling to the MOCA, Los Angeles (March-July 2015).
In 1991, the gallery in Paris hosted an exhibition of Sturtevant’s Warhol flowers and in 1994 another exhibition of Sturtevant’s works took place, this time featuring her repetitions of Johns’ number paintings. Reloaded, revisits these exhibitions and will bring together – in the same space, on the same walls – a historical body of Sturtevant’s iconic repetitions of Andy Warhol’s Marylin and flowers as well as Jasper Johns’ flags, some of which were shown in these first two exhibitions.
Reloaded is an exhibition of key works by the late Sturtevant, organized in collaboration with Loren Sturtevant, the artist’s daughter. The paintings will be presented in an encompassing and unique environment, highlighting relationships in Sturtevant’s work between her subversive approach to repetition, conceptions of authorship and the abundance of our digital era. Sturtevant always worked from memory, after having seen a work herself, and her aim was not to achieve an exact replica, but instead to force us to look beyond the surface. Her practice investigated aspects of art’s making, circulation and consumption whilst addressing notions of authenticity and originality.
The title of the exhibition, Reloaded, recalls Sturtevant’s critical gaze on today’s society that, as she said, is all about remaking, reusing, reassembling and recombining.
This exhibition will be an opportunity to gain a new perspective on Sturtevant’s innovations and to (re)discover her unique vision – her interpretation of what constitutes an artwork and her profound insights into the changes in society. As Hans Ulrich Obrist wrote recently, “Her pioneering work is now recognised as having presaged the unattributed information and endlessly repeating imagery that characterise the digital world of today.” (The Guardian, 19 May 2014)
