Characters: Scene I
Curated by Hélianthe Bourdeaux-Maurin
"An Exhibition that Aims to Shed Light on the Return of Characters in Contemporary Arts and
Our Apparent Need for the Stories They Tell."
Since the 1980's, contemporary art, in particular, painting, has had an overriding tendency toward realism. This movement- albeit inhomogeneous- has continued to open an increasingly large venue for narrative. But why did we experience a revival of this artistic form within the fine arts? What differentiates contemporary narration, in all its forms and intentions, from those of antiquity or even the 18th century? What quantifies this movement as a mirror of our society rather then a regression of artistic sensibilities? To provide a comprehensive answer to these questions requires great study of the subject, one that our art historians may not yet have enough distance to objectively consider. Nevertheless, one can try to analyze this phenomenon from an innovative perspective: character. The link of characters to narrative is deep and necessary; they are, after all, the primary vehicles of story.
Characters: Scene I & II, is an exhibition that aims to shed light on the return of characters and our apparent need for the stories they tell. The exhibition features renowned, mid-career and emerging artists who come from the worlds of fine art and illustration. Their works present cultural, historical, stylistic and technical diversity. These artists span the globe, representing America, Asia, Europe and all points in between. All the works of art have been produced between the 1980's and the present. Various paintings, drawings, prints, sculptures, photographs, and videos are featured. These works are bound by their aesthetic merit and, more so, by the fact that the artists who created them develop characters- whether it be one particular character, the same set of characters, or a seemingly endless number of characters over a substantial period of time. The works are shown together with the aim of carrying out a short study(incomplete and partial, yet nevertheless relevant) about characters: their definition, their significance, their message, their instrumentalization, their representation and their creation. Indeed, they offer keys to interpretation and open paths to understand this dazzling renewal of realism and narrative.
The artists selected are James Bewley, Jeremy Bronson, Robert Crumb, Chitra Ganesh, Philip Guston, James Jean, Kyung Jeon, Izima Kaoru, Nora Krug, Fay Ku, Nina Levy, D. Dominick Lombardi, Tracey Moffatt, Takashi Murakami, Yoshitomo Nara, Reuben Negrón, Shannon Plumb, Michael Rees, Cindy Sherman, Julian Stark and Joan B. Wheeler.Hélianthe Bourdeaux-Maurin is a French art historian based in New York.
With three Masters in Art History from the School of the Louvre in Paris and La Sorbonne University, Bourdeaux-Maurin has been involved in several international contemporary art exhibitions, as well as New York City's cutting-edge international group show, Happy Art for a Sad World.
