Other Images of Man

Since antiquity, figuration has been an entry point to the exploration of broader existential topics. In 1959, an exhibition titled New Images of Man curated by Peter Selz and presented at the Museum of Modern Art in New York focused on figuration in Europe and America following the Second World War. It presented "a new image of man, often shattered, or distorted, reflecting the anxieties of our century". The exhibition in New York was preceded in 1950 by Das Menschenbild in unserer Zeit (The Image of Man in Our Time) in Darmstadt, which similarly responded to a post war anxiety through an investigation of the representation of the human form.

 

Today, new institutional presentations focused on the figure continue to be a means of exploring issues of equality, authority, appropriation, inadequacy, empowerment, and identity.

 

Other Images of Man features approximately sixty works by more than thirty artists produced from the 1960s to today. This multi-generational survey explores figuration in painting, photography, sculpture, and video, that expands and upends earlier representations of masculinity and the male form.

American artist Bruce Nauman's sculpture Double Poke in the Eye II (1985) is comprised of neon tubes forming two simplified and facing silhouettes. The illuminated human heads are separated by overlapping hands which animate a dual poking motion. The result is a poignant social commentary in which two figures are forced to endure endless conflict without resolution, simultaneously humorous and frustrating.

American artist Justin Liam O'Brien combines a sentimentality for antiquity and the male form, in which elongated mannerist bodies are draped in textiles and bordered by classical architecture. Visitation (2022) presents three young, nude males who are intimately connected in their physical proximity to each other yet appear to be psychologically and emotionally disassociated.  O'Brien portrays himself and his companions joined by the symbol of a dove, suggesting peacefulness to their constructed environments within historically rich compositions.

Other Images of Man includes works by Adam Adach, Richard Artschwager, Georg Baselitz, Ana Benaroya, Lynda Benglis, Judith Bernstein, Caroll Dunham, Peter Eide, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Rainer Fetting, Ryan Gander, Adrian Ghenie, Alexander Harrison, Florian Krewer, Andrew Lenaghan, Lee Lozano, Markus Lüpertz, Marcin Maciejowski, Tala Madani, Tony Matelli, Jonathan Meese, Anne Minich, Pierre Molinier, Bruce Nauman, Justin Liam O'Brien, Julian Opie, A.R. Penck, Richard Prince, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Chris Regner, Sophy Rickett, Thomas Ruff, Cinga Samson, Eugen Schönebeck, Andres Serrano, Laurie Simmons, Kyle Staver, Francesco Vezzoli, Andy Warhol, and Franz West.