Cindy Sherman - Anti-Fashion

In the organizer's words:

The American artist Cindy Sherman (*1954 in New Jersey) is one of the most important and internationally successful contemporary artists. In her photographs, she stages herself in a variety of roles, playfully and critically questioning traditional ideals of beauty and stereotypes.

Sherman is inspired by different visual worlds: Cinema, television, advertising, magazines, art history, fairy tales, the Internet and social media provide her with decisive impulses. Fashion runs like a thread through Sherman's multifaceted work.

With around 50 works spanning five decades, the exhibition ANTI-FASHION is comprehensively dedicated to the captivating dialogue between Cindy Sherman and the fashion world. She uses commercial commissions, which she has regularly received since the 1980s from renowned fashion houses such as Chanel, designers such as Stella McCartney, and international fashion magazines such as Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, as a constant source of inspiration. But also vice versa, the artist influences the aesthetics of the fashion world to this day and sets essential impulses, also for a whole generation of photographers.

Her provocative photographs do not convey the glamour, sex appeal or elegance that we commonly associate with fashion. Instead, they show figures that are anything but desirable and contradict the flawless ideals of the fashion world. Last but not least, the theme of fashion proves to be the starting point for the artist's critical examination of aspects of identity, sex, gender, and age. Sherman's wide range of characters demonstrates the artificiality and mutability of identity, which appears more than ever to be selectable, (self-)constructed, and fluid.

With national and international loans and materials exclusively selected from the artist's New York archive, the exhibition is dedicated for the first time to the theme of fashion in Cindy Sherman's work. The exhibition is complemented by photographic and artistic positions from the holdings of the Falckenberg Collection. From the collection, works by the following artists* will be shown:

Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, Aidas Bareikis, Karla Black, John Bock, Monica Bonvicini, Olaf Breuning, Thorsten Brinkmann, Sophie Calle, Clegg & Guttman, Michael Ray Charles, Phil Collins, Walker Evans, Valie Export, Lynn Hershman-Leeson, Peter Hujar, Christian Jankowski, Astrid Klein, Barbara Kruger, Robert Longo, Urs Lüthi, Paul McCarthy, Dieter Meier, Marilyn Minter, Joyce Pensato, Richard Prince, Markus Schinwald, Christopher Williams

The exhibition was curated by Dr. Alessandra Nappo, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and realized by the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart in collaboration with Cindy Sherman's studio in New York and her gallery Hauser & Wirth. It will then be shown at FOMU - Fotomuseum Antwerp.