A MURMUR OF HISTORY
30 April - 10 June 2018, by appointment
Mamma Andersson, Dexter Dalwood, Amie Siegel, John Stezaker
DE LEÓN is delighted to present our latest exhibition that brings together the work of four international artists, Mamma Andersson, Dexter Dalwood, Amie Siegel and John Stezaker.
The show explores how artists' work can be informed by elements from the past whether this is through literature, politics, film or history. By appropriating images and cultural references and reconfiguring or recombining them, these artists offer us a lens onto the present, enabling an exploration of such topics as the plasticity of memory, psychology, identity and cultural ownership.
Mamma Andersson is known for her powerfully haunting paintings, creating worlds that have a near-hypnotic sense of familiarity but with little trace of our modern age. The works being shown are part of a suite of unique woodcut prints which Andersson made using a 1950s printing press. One of the works exhibited depicts the body of a classical marble sculpture that she has playfully clothed in a frock coat and court shoes. Andersson was inspired to make this work after reading an article about the discovery in 1957 of a group of ancient sculptures at Sperlonga in Italy.
Michael Bracewell wrote about Dexter Dalwood’s work, ‘Dalwood makes paintings which collage quotations from the history of art and cultural iconography. His paintings often depict the sites of violent, traumatic and historic events. Character and action are conveyed through symbol, atmosphere and most intensely through the visual language and temperament of painting itself.’[i] This splicing together of images is evident in his painting Marie-Henri Beyle. Beyle is better known by his pseudonym, Stendhal, one of the foremost practitioners of realism. Dalwood has visually quoted from two earlier historical works to create a painting which alludes to a biographical event in the author’s formative years.
Amie Siegel makes layered, carefully constructed works that consider the undercurrents of value systems, cultural ownership and image-making. Siegel works across film, video, photography, performance and installation. Here we see her film Fetish, shot at London’s Freud Museum, where every year the contents of Sigmund Freud’s last consulting room are given a nocturnal clean. This slow and careful clean is reflected in the pace of the film itself – considered and mesmerizing. We are shown the psychoanalyst’s personal collection of hundreds of archeological statues and artifacts being meticulously brushed down, suggesting an analogy between the conservator’s brush removing the layers of dust and the personal excavations and disclosures of analysis, both of which are normally hidden from view.
John Stezaker is fascinated by the lure of images. By combining classic black and white film stills with vintage postcards, both taken from a time before he was born, he creates something new, subversive and deeply psychological. Included in the exhibition are some of his famous Mask series where photographs of glamorous sitters are fused with postcards depicting caves, bridges and wooded pathways, making for images of eerie but unsettling beauty. Stezaker describes his fascination with ‘the obsolescence of images, the point at which they become illegible, mysterious, at which they touch on another world’. [ii]
Mamma Andersson (b. 1962, Luleå, Sweden)
Solo exhibitions include:
Stephen Friedman Gallery, London, UK (2017); Svanesang, together with Tal R, Galleri Bo Bjerggaard, Copenhagen, Denmark (2016); Svanesang, together with Tal R, Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden (2016); Mamma Andersson: Behind the Curtain, David Zwirner, New York, USA (2015) Tick Tock, Konsthallen, Luleå, Sweden (2013).
Mamma Andersson is represented by Stephen Friedman Gallery, London; Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden and David Zwirner Gallery, London and New York, USA.
Dexter Dalwood (b. 1960, Bristol, UK)
Solo exhibitions include:
Ein Brief – New Paintings by Dexter Dalwood, Hubert Winter Gallery, Vienna, Austria (2017);
Propaganda Painting, Simon Lee Gallery, Hong Kong (2016); Dexter Dalwood, London Paintings, Simon Lee Gallery, London, UK (2014); Dexter Dalwood, Kunsthaus, Centre Pasquart, Biel, Switzerland (2013); Turner Prize nominee, Tate Britain, London, UK (2010).
Dexter Dalwood is represented by Simon Lee Gallery, London/Hong Kong.
Amie Siegel (b. 1974, Chicago, USA)
Solo exhibitions include:
Amie Siegel: Winter, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, Spain (2017); 12 x 12: Amie Siegel, Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Germany (2017); Amie Siegel: Interiors, Frye Art Museum, Seattle, USA (2017); Amie Siegel: Strata, South London Gallery, London, UK (2017); Amie Siegel: Double Negative, Villa Stück, Munich, Germany (2016); Amie Siegel: Provenance, MAK Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna, Austria; Amie Siegel: Provenance, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA (2014).
Amie Siegel is represented by Simon Preston Gallery, New York, USA.
John Stezaker (b. 1949, Worcester, UK)
Solo exhibitions include:
Love, The Approach, London, UK, (2018); John Stezaker, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester, UK (2017-18); Lost World, City Gallery Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand; Govett-Brewster Art Gallery, New Plymouth, New Zealand; Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetu, Christchurch, New Zealand; Centre for Contemporary Photograph, Melbourne, Australia (2017-18); The Voyeur: Photoroman Collages, 1976–1979, Petzel Gallery, New York, USA (2017); Aftermath, York Art Gallery, York, UK (2017-18); John Stezaker: Horse, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2017); Film Works, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill On Sea, UK (2015); John Stezaker, Whitechapel Gallery, London, UK, touring to MUDAM, Luxembourg, and Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, USA (2011-12).
John Stezaker is represented by The Approach, London, UK; Galerie Gisela Captain, Cologne, Germany; Richard Gray Gallery, Chicago, USA; Petzel Gallery, New York, USA.
[i] Bracewell M., Ein Brief – New Paintings by Dexter Dalwood, Hubert Winter Gallery, Vienna, Austria
curated by Michael Bracewell, 2017.
[ii] Stezaker J., John Stezaker, Ridinghouse, Whitechapel Gallery, 2010, p.37.