The Cult of Personality

Portraits and Mass Culture
at Galerie Erna Hecey

October 17 - November 29, 2008

The Cult of Personality page

Yasser Aggour

Made by sign painters in Egypt, a country where one can have a painting done more cheaply than printing a photograph, the production process of Yasser Aggour’s portraits of world leaders and entertainers engage the economic and cultural exchange values of the “global marketplace”. While the faces are fairly accurate from a representational standpoint, the cultural origins are inexplicably present in these paintings, which are then represented by Aggour as photographs. The uncertain relationship between the large shadows cast by iconic figures, and their idiosyncratic treatment by the sign painters commissioned by the artist reveal the slippery nature of whom exactly one invests in when they lend their beliefs to a larger than life personality.

Jennifer Dalton

Acting as a self-appointed archivist whose goal is to amass evidence concerning the underlying agendas in a major cultural magazines editorial choices, Jennifer Dalton’s piece “What Does an Artist Look Like? (Every Artist to Appear in the New Yorker Magazine 1999-2001) [Visual Artists]” reconstructs three years of the New Yorker magazines images of artists. Cataloguing these representations by virtue of their emphasis on “genius” (reverence) or “pin-up”(seduction), the first usually older men and the second young women, Dalton’s piece offers a long-term reflection on the month to month construction and maintenance of identity clichés used to enhance our interest in the creative class.

Peter Friedl

The ‘forty acres and a mule’ policy referred to in the title of Peter Friedel’s work was one of the few examples in American history of an attempt redress the brutal exploitations of slavery. After the Civil War, part of the coastal south was ordered set aside by General William Sherman for land grants to freed slaves, who were each to receive ‘forty acres and a mule’. This order was revoked by Andrew Johnson after President Lincoln’s assassination, so that the phrase now represents one of the great betrayals of a people by their government. The five images that comprise Friedel’s work obliquely refer to, among other things, the often false guarantees of the democratic system (Kids Voting-the 2000 American presidential elections), the perils of entitlement within the political classes (the young George W. Bush on a donkey) well as the cultural exploitation of African Americans (Pam Grier star of many Blaxtploitation films).

Jef Geys

In 1987, investigating the complexities of identity through the adaptation of proper names for the purpose of constructing fake publicity, Geys plastered the invented name ‘Charlotte Visage’ over a set of political campaign posters, flaunting the anonymity of a fabricated identity on top of the publicity-seeking candidates image. In an act concurrent with the increased use of media strategies in political campaigns that emerged during Thatcher and Reagan era, Geys inverted the publicity machine, reclaiming public space co-opted by politicians broadcasting their persona to potential voters. Jef Geys’ Proper Names consists of a photograph of this intervention, a vitrine with newspapers featuring ads (Guy Verhofstadt and Jef Sleeckx) from that campaign, and a billboard-sized name, Kayembe Norbert, pasted onto the wall. In large block letters above the vitrine, the name Kayembe Norbert echoes the ‘graffiti’ ‘Charlotte Visage’ found in the photograph. Asserting the significance of one’s subjectivity within the public realm (Geys served in the Belgium army with the Congolese Kayembe Norbert) Geys personal biography merges with selections from his political archives, interrupting the assumed hierarchy of ‘the leaders’ and the people’.

Liselot van der Heijden

Liselot van der Heijden’s video installation Untitled (Che, New York) examines the surprising transformation of Che Guevara’s image from communist revolutionary to a symbol for ‘bad boy’ chic. Presenting images of New York City tourist shops where t-shirts with Che’s face are interspersed among shirts offering crude slogans that appeal to male adolescent rebellion, van der Heijden’s two channel video contrasts the embrace of crass commercialism of Che’s current image with audio and translation of his United Nations speech a in New York in 1964. As Guevara rails against Yankee imperialism, a slide show of small, overcrowded tourist shops, where Che’s image can be found among t-shirts that employ crude, often bigoted humor, offers an absurd pairing with the stark, revolutionary zeal of his uncompromising anti- imperialism. The two diverse cultural examples of this historical figure reveal a kind of cultural cold war fought over his image, prompting one to ask, ‘Who is the real Che?’

Vitaly Komar

As Soviet émigré artists who had been imbued with the Social Realist style, Komar and Melamid possess a keen understanding of the concept of the cult of personality. Finding parallels between the idolization of Lenin in Soviet Russia, and the heroic portrayals of America’s first president, Vitaly Komar began collecting George Washington memorabilia, which eventually inspired the “American Dreams” project. For “The Cult of Personality” exhibition, Vitaly Komar will present a selection from his extensive archive of political memorabilia.

Ligorano and Reese

Reducing an individual who loomed large during the Bush administrations exploitation of the fear of terrorism to a bust inside of a snow globe, Ligarano/Reese’s” John Ashcroft Snowglobe” transforms a figure once associated with foreboding and dread into an icon of American kitsch. Frozen in a bubble that produces “snow” based on its owners whim, the once aggressive image of a Bush appointee who has fallen by the wayside is now preserved in a hermetically sealed container that offers a comic counterpoint to the political bluster and hyperbole of the not too distant past.

Sherrie Levine

As an early example of Levine’s "President" series, this post card sized image shows an advertisement inside a profile of Abraham Lincoln. Looking pensively out of the window, the mother and child depicted in this proto-Victorian interior seem concerned yet comfortably embraced by the silhouette of one of America’s most trusted presidents.

Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy’s brutal analysis of the 1980’s Jeff Koon’s sculpture of Michael Jackson and his chimp Bubbles offers an extremely deadpan treatment of a multilayered narrative of celebrity worship. Filtered through Koon’s baroque treatment of a figure whose elusive persona seemed to defy the reductive brands that most celebrities are represented by, McCarthy’s “flipping” of Koon’s sculpture appears both to mock the fascination with Jackson indulged in by many in the cultural community, while acknowledging the resilient nature of celebrity status that exists in both “high “ and “low”.

Muntadas and Reese

As anyone with the least bit of awareness of American presidential campaigns realizes, the intensity and pervasiveness of political advertisements leading up to the final “showdown” lend them a frenzied atmosphere not unlike a televised wrestling match. Behind the “slapdowns”, the name-calling, and the parodying of candidates positions are sophisticated strategists full of various techniques aimed at manipulating public sentiment. Muntadas and Reese’s “Political Advertisement 2000” is an archival video project that has assembled, in chronological order, campaign ads from U.S. presidential races going back to 1952. As the history of these ads unfolds via specific examples from each campaign, the technical advances of film and video are paralleled by more media savvy content in the commercials revealing a transformation from a simple “meet the people” approach to the more recent no holds barred efforts to humiliate and embarrass the opponent.

Bill Owens

Documenting the California neighborhood where he lived in the mid-seventies, Bill Owens “Suburbia” photographs represent perhaps one of the most memorable and candid depictions of American suburban life. Owen’s familiarity with his subjects, and his tendency to add a deadpan line or two to accompany the image, resulted in photographs that often walked a fine line between banality and charm. “Ronald Reagan on TV” depicts our former president in a movie role on a living room television set. Shown during the Christmas holiday in a room decorated with a Christmas tree, Reagan’s image is captured just below a nativity scene sitting on top of the television set. In an oddly prescient moment, Reagan’s role as national savior during his 1980’s "Morning in America" campaign seems to have been eerily anticipated by Owen’s photograph.

Julia Wachtel

Initially appropriated from an issue of People magazine (when the magazine was published in black and white) and used as a cover image for an exhibition catalogue of her work, Julia Wachtel’s archival contribution to The Cult of Personality depicts a selected quartet from the vast pantheon of 1980’s celebrities. Gathered around Elton John seated at his piano and showing the enthusiasm appropriate to each of their well crafted personas, Cher, Joan Rivers and Pee Wee Herman are captured in a moment of conviviality that seems at odds with the unique brands that each represents. Taken from the “celebrities are people too” genre of the famous entertainer school of representation, this picture is somewhat reminiscent of All Star games in professional sports, where superstars who are used to shining on their own teams must adapt to sharing the spotlight with others also accustomed to being the only star on the stage.

Karen Yama

First exhibited at the DAAD Gallery while the artist was living and working Berlin, Karen Yama’s "They’re Hier" sends up the German practice of dubbing Hollywood actor’s voices when their films are screened in Germany. Yama’s double-sided portraits of the three principle actors in "The Shining" are placed on a shelf in front of a mirror, with Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duval, and Danny Loyd facing out towards the viewer and the reflections of the normally invisible actors who provide the German voices for their characters visible as reflections. Perhaps as an acknowledgement of the underlying terror implicit in the use of a mirror in this context, Yama’s two sets of unstable portraits appear to “inhabit” each other, as each manufactured persona vies for authenticity against its perpetual double.

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