Sherrie Levine, Repetition and Difference (2022), via David Zwirner
This month in Paris, David Zwirner invites artist Sherrie Levine to present a body of new works in the city, marking her first show in the French capital in over 30 years. Featuring major new suites of paintings and photographs, as well as a selection of sculptures, this exhibition showcases several bodies of work that are central to Levine’s practice, and that distinctly engage her ongoing inquiry into notions of authorship, originality, and authenticity.
Sherrie Levine (Installation View), via David Zwirner
The exhibition in Paris—the artist’s first in the city in over thirty years—is bookended by two early sculptural works by Levine, created in 2002. Each is comprised of a pair of small-scale gnome figures—a replica of one of the dwarfs from Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs—rendered in black or white glass and positioned alongside a more traditional-looking polished bronze figure. The notion of the pair is fundamental to Levine’s practice and concerns the relationship of one thing, or artwork, to another, while also raising the broader question of whether a pair is a repetition. Levine explores the idea of cultural and social referents, the dwarf here presented in its folkloric original and the buffed, smoothed version popularized by the corporation. Levine seems to examine the pairs in turn as a set of alternating value systems, comparing both modes in their relation to each other.
Sherrie Levine, Ivory Dominoes: 1-12 (2022), via David Zwriner
Sherrie Levine, Ivory Dominoes: 1-12 (detail) (2022), via David Zwriner
Also on view is Ivory Dominoes, a suite of 12 paintings on mahogany that replicate the surface of a group of dominoes. The work is an example of Levine’s earlier “generic abstractions,” which evoked minimalist painting and sculpture from the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the surfaces of game boards such as chess or backgammon. Here, ivory paint is lightly washed over the surface of the wood, leaving the grain visible and emphasizing the painting’s support, and black and red dots are arrayed across the surface in a seemingly random pattern. While the colors of the paintings are true to the dominoes, they also recall colors commonly used in constructivist paintings, a frequent point of reference for the artist.
Reshaping and revisiting similar tropes across her works and career, the show closes June 3rd.
– D. Creahan
Read more:
Sherrie Levine at David Zwirer [Exhibition Site]
