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NYU Goes to Heidelberg: Stuart Sherman's "Right Brain Problems"

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Hamburg-based artist and curator Lena Ziese discovered Stuart Sherman while reading a 2009 interview with Pierre Bal-Blanc, director and curator of the Centre d’arts contemporain in Brittany (http://www.e-flux.com/journal/the-death-of-the-audience-a-conversation-with-pierre-bal-blanc/).

The interviewer had, perhaps, only thought to reference Sherman because of two shows dedicated to the artist that took place earlier that year––one at Participant Inc. and another, “Beginningless Thought/Endless Seeing,” at NYU’s 80WSE gallery. (Sherman was later also included in the Grey Art Gallery’s 2011 “Fluxus at NYU” showcase.)

The 2009 exhibitions, the first to consider Sherman’s work following his untimely death in 2001, were great odes to an artist who, due to his quiet manners and small-scale performances, never attainted the same level of fame as some others in the New York avant-garde scene.

The small mention made Ziese curious about Sherman, and she began researching the artist in collaboration with Susanne Weiss, co-curator and director of the Heidelberger Kunstverein in Heidelberg, Germany. Their search for more information quickly led them to Mark Bradford, Sherman’s longtime friend and executor of his estate, who told them about the Stuart Sherman Papers at NYU’s Fales Library.

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Entrance to "Right Brain Problems" at the Heidelberger Kunstverein

In early 2012 the Ziese and Weiss visited the Fales archive and, impressed by the scope and creativity of Sherman’s output, decided to organize an exhibition of his work. The 2009 shows had re-established Sherman’s presence in the city where he spent most of his career; three years later, Ziese and Weiss thought his work was ready for international consumption.

The result: “Right Brain Problems” opened this April at the Heidelberger Kunstverein. The exhibition presents Sherman’s films and performances, as well as his collages and drawings (many of these borrowed from the Fales collection).

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Crowd at the exhibition opening

Central to any show about Sherman are his Spectacles: the short performances, well remembered by his friends, in which he deftly manipulated unremarkable, mass-produced trinkets around a folding TV-tray table. His quick but precisely executed movements introduce the objects in various sequences that are deliberately––almost frustratingly––puzzling. How do they relate to each other? What associations or feelings are they meant to evoke?

He is equally remembered for his other spectacles, that is, the eyeglasses he would wear during his performances. A picture of Sherman from the Eleventh Spectacle (The Erotic) shows the artist donning a pair with the word “eye” printed on the right lens, and an image printed on the left.

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Installation view

This photograph (also in “Beginningless Thought/Endless Seeing”) plays an important role in “Right Brain Problems” because it captures what is at the heart of Sherman’s work, in Susanne Weiss’s words, a preoccupation with “re-interpreting and re-thinking everyday gestures and objects.” Sherman’s glasses playfully hint at all of the different influences shaping human perception and understanding: most prominently, language and images.

Later in the Eleventh Spectacle, again with the sense of humor and levity typical of his work, Sherman tears the two sides apart. “Right Brain Problems,” as the title (inspired in part by Bradford, who writes a blog of the same name) would suggest, asks viewers to go beyond normal modes of thinking to find personal meaning in Sherman’s art.

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A viewer examines Sherman's drawings and collages

“Right Brain Problems” also displays pieces by artists who either collaborated with Sherman or were inspired by him, most notably, Babette Mangolte, Sherman’s friend, who also contributed a text to the 80WSE catalogue.

Two of Sherman’s recently digitized films—Berlin Tour (with Sherman in the German capital) and The Discovery of the Phonograph (a beautiful short film of New York City, with elliptical camera movements mimicking a revolving record) are also on view.

The Kunstverein is the only institution for contemporary art in Heidelberg, a small city that sees far fewer examples of avant-garde art than does New York. Its embrace of Sherman and “Right Brain Problems” is clear proof of the impact of NYU’s commitment to protecting this remarkable artist’s legacy.

--Written by Hannah Stamler, Heidelberger Kunstverein


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