Cindy Sherman
The Magnetic "Imitation of Life"
The show “Imitation of Life” brings together over 100 works by Cindy Sherman to the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio. The exhibit emphasizes Cindy Sherman’s electrical connection to the movies. “Her work has been deconstructing stereotypes established by Hollywood from the very beginning of her career by manipulating its language and using its rhetorics. Imitation is at the core of her artistic practice, “curator Philipp Kaiser explains. She helped to name the show after the film of the same name directed by Douglas Sirk in 1959.
Cindy Sherman posed as her own model starting in college and has continued to do so throughout her career. The exhibition begins with early photographs from 1976 and continues by sampling from her entire body of work. Conversations with John Waters, Miranda July, Jamie Lee Curtis and Molly Ringwald are the audio accompaniment. We can also listen to a conversation between Sofia Coppola and Sherman. Her influences are vast and her own scope of influence is vastly powerful.
Her uncanny, relentless ability to conjure individual portraits of elusive feminine identity through painstaking detail is incredible. Some of the photographs bring a familiar sense of seeing friends after years have passed or a feeling of familiarity-based tension built of fear or discomfort.
Pleasure is not what she is seeking. We feel oddly and strongly pulled in always and then at times pushed back. It is this energy that is so powerful and unique. Cindy Sherman’s ability to create her own magnet is so real, so felt by the viewer. This is her true genius and every artist’s desire.
