VISAGES

Almine Rech New York, Upper East Side is pleased to present Visages, a group show showcasing works by renowned artists.

November 7 – December 14, 2024

The group shows includes works by Georg Baselitz, Miriam Cahn, George Condo, Günther Förg, Françoise Gilot, Elaine de Kooning, Marie Laurencin, Markus Lüpertz, Pablo Picasso, Richard Prince, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann, Matthias Bitzer, Brian Calvin, Ali Cherri, Genieve Figgis, Alex Israel, José Lerma, Inès Longevial, Ryan Schneider, Claire Tabouret, Jess Valice, Francesco Vezzoli, Amanda Wall, Chloe Wise and Ji Xin.

In this show of portraits—each one distinct, by a different artist in their individual manner—the group assembled produces a scattershot crowd that suggests a tentative community, a speculative international public that is at turns discombobulated, bawdy, dispassionate, flirtatious, disfigured, fierce, chic, brooding, haunted, energetic, and absurd. One beautiful—or anguished, joyful, sleepy, withdrawn, thoughtful—face holds the whole world within its contours. And a face is always beautiful, the way all animals are beautiful because they exist, because it won out over countless hypothetical genetic alternatives and is real in the flesh.

It is, as well, a partial portrait of this particular gallery and many of the artists who constitute it. Taken together, the works model an aspirational diversity, an array of coexisting differences in subject, approach, and look. The abundance and disparities, undergirded by a basic shared humanity, are the point. It bears reminding that there are a hundred ways to be diverse—in style, interest, attitude, touch, texture, framing, distortion, degrees of abstraction, varying sensitivities, experience, etc.

Fortunately, the challenge posed by our faces is never ending and there must be as many ways to draw, paint, photograph, or sculpt a face as there are faces to represent.