John Waters: Director and Artist

JOHN WATERS
Children Who Smoke, 2009
Chromogenic color print
8 photos: 20 x 14 inches overall (50.8 x 35.6 cm), Ed. of 5, Gagosian Gallery

Cult film director John Waters' (best know for the original Hairspray) photographic and sculptural work is currently on show at leading gallery Gagosian (Beverly Hills), under the exhibition title "Rear Projection". Waters utilises the medium of cinematography which he often uses absurdly and boldly in his own films to create hybrid stills which depict unreal or imagined situations. To Waters, "There is no such thing as a bad movie frame", although there certainly must be a disturbing one. Waters manipulates stills to include actors with cleft palates, speaking pig latin, holding product placements and a cheeky nod to the exhibition title, films projected onto bottoms (not all in the same still). Click here for a video of John Waters talking about his work and artistic practice.




JOHN WATERS
Pig Latin (detail), 2009
Chromogenic color print
8 photos: 14 3/4 x 86 3/4 inches overall (framed) (37.5 x 220.3cm)
Ed. of 5


Rear Projection
April 11 - May 22, 2009
Gagosian Gallery (Beverly Hills)

Another year, Another Warhol

Despite Andy Warhol's death just over 20 yrs ago new and reconstructed exhibitions of his art are still happening on a regular basis. Andy Warhol's place in history as a Jewish artist (his original family name was Warhola) and his place in the history of the many famous gallerists who supported him start off the Warhol exhibitions for 2009.

Warhol's Jews: Ten Portraits Reconsidered exhibition is about to conclude at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco and was organised in conjunction with The Jewish Museum, New York. The portraits include Sarah Bernhardt, Louis Brandeis,Martin Buber, Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, George Gershwin, Franz Kafka, the Marx Brothers, Golda Meir, Gertrude Stein.

Presented alongside original photographs and sketches for the portraits as well as source material and reviews from the time of lays the basis for interpreting the original 1980 exhibition Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century shown at the Lowe Art Museum in Miami and The Jewish Museum in New York.

At the same time a private collection of his Warhol's works Warhol from the Sonnabend Collection will be exhibited at the Gagosian in New York until Saturday, February 28, 2009. Ileana Sonnabend was one of Andy Warhol's strongest supporters with some of his most well known series exhibited at her gallery in Paris including Death and Disasters (1964), Flowers (1965), and Thirteen Most Wanted Men (1967).