Artists

Cindy Sherman, Victor Man, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Thomas Struth, Bruce Nauman, Jeff Koons, Martin Kippenberger, Rudolf Stingel, Oliver Bak, Albert Oehlen, Dana Schutz, Giorgio de Chirico, Tracey Emin, Maria Lassnig, Georg Baselitz, Rebecca Warren, Eric Fischl, Michaela Eichwald, Nathanaëlle Herbelin, Lorenzo Amos, Rita Ackermann, Grant Falardeau

Press release

Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present The Self Assessed, an exhibition of self-portraits curated by Cornelius Tittel, at Potsdamer Straße 77-87 in Berlin. 'The most fascinating surface on earth is that of the human face.' Art has never ceased to be captivated by this observation, which Georg Christoph Lichtenberg recorded in his notebooks with the elegance of an aphorism. For this surface is never neutral. It is a screen for projection, a setting, a stage – a field of tension where art and society come into closest contact. This is precisely where the exhibition The Self Assessed unfolds – curated by Cornelius Tittel, who unites an impressive list of artists that reflects his ten years as editor-in-chief at Blau International. The history of the self-portrait can be read as a history of such constructions: it assigns the individual a place, as a bearer of meaning, as a role made visible, as a figure within an order that is either affirmed or called into question in the act of representation. She faces the viewer with an unwavering gaze; her painting style is uncompromisingly modern, her claim clear: not to be a likeness, but a counterpart. In its directness, the painting recalls Rembrandt's self-portraits and is thus at the same time a harbinger of a subjectivity that can no longer be categorised. From here, the exhibition spans the 20th and 21st centuries. Giorgio de Chirico stages himself in shifting roles – as an old master, as a historical reference, as his own caricature. Through his travesties, he subverts the notion of a stable self and opens up a space in which identity becomes a performative gesture. This movement finds its logical continuation in the work of Cindy Sherman: her face transforms into a variable surface; identity appears as an effect of representation.