17 august - 8 october - EXTENDED THROUGH OCTOBER 15
Artists on Artists visit & discussion and Closing Reception,
Saturday, October 13, 4 pm
YO! contemporary self-portraits
photographs, prints, mixed media, and video
Andrea Cote, Santiago Garza, Tamara Kostianovsky, Serge J-F. Levy, Lucia Pizzani, Deborah Riley

To view the exhibition and artworks Click here

Mentions in the East Hampton Star (Janet Goleas), The New York Times (Benjamin Genocchio, Sept. 30/07), and reviewed by Marion Wolberg-Weiss in Dan’s Papers (October 12/07)

Traditionally, artists have used themselves as subjects, drawing or painting from a reflection in a mirror. Van Gogh, Kahlo, and Picasso are some of the names that leap to mind in modern art, however the genre came into predominance since the advent of the mirror in the 15th century, and we can recall, for instance, the numerous self-portraits of Rembrandt or Dürer. In contemporary art, the use of new media for self-representation, in particular photography, has predominated, for instance with Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Chuck Close, and Nan Goldin. Despite mechanical (and digital) reproduction, artists have continued to use the self-portrait to push past the ‘reflection in the mirror’ to search for deeper meaning and understanding in matters of the self and soul. An expression of psyche, narrative, identity, social status, personification, or self-perception, with mental illnesses or disturbances often a central aspect, self-portraits have always been the object/subject of intrigue, study, and appreciation for the specialized and greater public.

In YO!, the majority of the artists work with photography, some exclusively, others as a starting point. Lucia Pizzani (Venezuela/UK), for instance, employs a digital camera, notably using mirrors to capture fragmented reflections of her self. She displaces and disjoints her image further by mounting a group of eleven photographs, further fragments, to complete a self-portrait wall installation, “constructing a narrative with movement and expression, using my body as an abstract landscape…. I lose the sense of self, entering a kind of numbness where the empty space/mind are guided by instinct”. An edition of the work on view (Espejito-Espejito, 2006) was recently purchased for the Mercantil Collection, Venezuela. Santiago Garza (Mexico/USA) gives a nod to his paternal ancestors in an intimate, historical take of himself, part narrative, part identity, employing a coat of arms, period dress, antique frames and distressed effects to heighten the significance of who he can perceive himself to be at a given moment. Deborah Riley (USA) utilizes photographic self-portraits that go on to form part of highly contrasted, deeply saturated Solarplate prints, intensely jarring and moving as the artist poses with different objects, a bird cage, baby doll, or animal, creating a combination portrait/still-life that recalls Caravaggio or Goya. Known primarily for his street photography, Serge J-F. Levy (USA) has recently delved deeply into self-representation. Here he introduces a series that integrates painting and photography, Suicide Portraits, Polaroid headshots that he embellishes with minimal color to great effect, reducing the potential detail of the photograph and allowing for a more ambiguous yet highly charged expression of himself. “The aim of this introspective work is to tap into the so-called “source” of the inspiration and stories behind my street photography and create a body of work that universally speaks to the emotional landscape of all human beings”.

Though photography is one of her mediums, multi-disciplinary artist, Andrea Cote (USA), is represented here also with video work that presents her continual exploration of her own body as subject, object and medium. Like Pizzani, her self-representation is fragmented and distorted, but rather than using a mirror as the sole source for reflection, for her the video camera becomes a mirror “coaxing my other selves out to play”. Faces (1998-2005), the photographic series on view, was selected for the Center for Modern Psychoanalytic Studies’ inaugural exhibition at its new gallery opening in late October this year. Finally, Tamara Kostianovksky (Israel/Argentina/USA), whose works, Motherland and Second Skin are currently on exhibit in the S-Files Biennial at El Museo del Barrio, New York (Collection Ellen & Jerome Stern), employs her own hair and clothing to create autobiographical works. Using these very personal materials to make maps she represents her own body and its presence in this world: “These works document my journey, overcoming barriers of nationality and language, piecing together a utopian state, one not possible in the world as it stands, but one tailored to fit my own person”.

Are we doomed, like Narcissus, to fall in love with our own reflections? The personal value of self-portraiture for both the artist and the viewer is in continual debate, and this exhibition is not intended to come to any grand conclusions. Rather, it is a discrete selection of contemporary artists who explore images of themselves as a possible means of understanding; some artists are impelled more than others to explore their own bodies in order to gain a clearer understanding of themselves and the world. Are we to feel like voyeurs as we view self-portraits and observe the lives, bodies, feelings, and thoughts of others? Or, instead, do we learn to examine, and thus know and understand our own selves more through this [self] examination–reflection—of others?