EXHIBITION BY 31 WOMEN
Private view: July 15, 2016, 7 – 9 p.m.
July 16 – August 27, 2016
On July 15, 2016 Exhibition by 31 Women will open at Philipp Pflug Contemporary gallery. Featuring works by 31 contemporary female artists, the show is a tribute to Peggy Guggenheim, who in 1943 presented one of the first radically all-female art exhibitions of all time under the same title in her New York gallery Art of this Century. Together with her close advisors Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and an extended jury, Guggenheim put together a presentation comprising mostly of Surrealist and abstract paintings. Over 70 years later, Philipp Pflug contemporary pays homage to Peggy Guggenheim’s revolutionary exhibition, which has since very nearly faded into obscurity, applying its curatorial concept to the current arts context.
Peggy Guggenheim (1898 – 1979), dubbed the ‘Mistress of Modernism’,1 was a visionary avant-gardist and a key figure of Western 20th century art history. On October 20, 1942 she inaugurated her first own gallery space on the 7th floor of a New York apartment house on 30 W 57 St. Here, she presented both her collection, as well as occasionally selling works from the exhibitions held at the space. It was only her second exhibition that she dedicated to exclusively contemporary female artists, showing works by Djuna Barnes, Xenia Cage, Leonora Carrington, Elisabeth Eyre da Lanux, Leonor Fini, Suzy Frelinghuysen, Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Meraud Guevara, Anne Harvey, Valentine Hugo, Buffie Johnson, Frida Kahlo, Jacqueline Lamba Breton, Gypsy Rose Lee, Aline Meyer Liebman, Hazel McKinley, Louise Nevelson, Meret Oppenheim, Milena Pavlovic Barili, Barbara Reis, Irene Rice Pereira, Kay Sage Tanguy, Gretchen Schoeninger, Sonja Sekula, Esphyr Slobodkina, Hedda Sterne, Dorothea Tanning, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Julia Thecia, Pegeen Vail and Maria Elena Vieira da Silva. The art works were presented in a display designed by architect Frederick Kiesler, which is now widely regarded an iconic piece of staged exhibition design. Rather than hanging the paintings on the walls, they were freely suspended from wooden arms throughout the exhibition space. The show attracted considerable attention from the art viewing public of New York and beyond.
The current exhibition at Philipp Pflug Contemporary references Peggy Guggenheim’s revolutionary approach. It brings together works by 31 female artists born between 1971 and 1989, which cannot however be subsumed under a single or even several artistic tendencies, trends or styles. Rather, the current artistic positions showcased here could not be more diverse. This in turn reveals the tensions and contradictions that inform the spirit of contemporary art making: Exhibition by 31 Women is an exhibition on the status quo and the diversity of present day art.
With work by: Maria Anisimowa, Bianca Baldi, Jagoda Bednarsky, Anna-Sophie Berger, Anne Lina Billinger, Benedikte Bjerre , Shannon Bool, Andrea Büttner, Kerstin Cmelka, E.M.C. Collard, Tintin Cooper, Keren Cytter, Charlotte Dualé, Flaka Haliti, Sandra Havlicek, Lena Henke, Tina Kohlmann, Sandra Kranich, Alicja Kwade, Kate Newby, Anca Munteanu Rimnic, Veronika Russell, Elif Saydam, Katharina Schücke, Nora Schultz, Hayley Aviva Silverman, Lisa Tiemann, Anna Uddenberg, Jasmin Werner, Claudia Wieser and Adrian Williams.
Initiated by Philipp Pflug and advised by Vivien Trommer.
For more information, see here.
