Galerie Gmurzynska is pleased to announce La Tentation d'Exister. There is always Champagne in the Fridge, Anh Duong's first solo show in Switzerland and her inaugural show with the gallery.
'When I paint myself, I use a true mirror. So it's a reflection of the reflection, so it's actually the real me.'
– Anh Duong
Featuring more than 20 oil paintings dating from 1989 to today, the exhibition will explore the questions of self and identity in the 21st century.
Captivating and voyeuristic, Duong's portraits and self-portraits are both revealing and mysterious as if watching something about to unfold. The viewer enters private moments in intimate spaces, the paintings capture a specific mood or time in the life of the artist and yet we are left to ponder/wonder what that moment or chapter may have been. The exaggerated eyes transfix our gaze, and we feel captured, pierced, exposed, as nude as the oils we are observing. However many doors these paintings open, they throw up an even greater amount of closed ones, making them all the more alluring and intriguing.
The still-lives, which Duong also identifies as self-portraits, speak to a relationship with the self. They show typical objects from a woman's boudoir, such as shoes, perfumes, and make-up, perhaps representing a modern woman's armour as well as hinting at a consumerist underpinning. Like the portraits, these objects speak of a woman's relationship with her self-image. How essential is this armor, portrayed in such a seductive manner? Whatever they may say about women or identity in the 21st century, Duong's enigmatic paintings never fail to seduce and capture the viewer.
About Anh Duong
Anh Duong was born in Bordeaux, France to a Vietnamese father and Spanish mother. She studied architecture at the École des beaux-arts in Paris and danced with the Franchetti Academy of Classical Dance. In 1988 she moved to New York City where she began painting. Duong's unique perspective is influenced by her varied aesthetic career and creative interests, as a successful model, actress and muse, inspiring artists such as Julian Schnabel, working with major designers such as Donna Karan and John Galliano, and posing for esteemed photographers. Discovered by David Seidner, who photographed her for the iconic YSL campaign for Vogue in 1986, Duong later posed with Peter Lindbergh, Mario Testino, and Patrick Demarchelier to name a few and appeared in publications such as Elle and Architectural Digest.
Forgetting the subject to focus on the technical painting itself, the artist focuses on the portrait, and mostly the self-portrait that she paints on a daily basis likening it to a visual diary. Anh Duong has however also worked on portraits of prominent art collectors and personalities, such as Princess Maria Theresia Alexandra of Thurn and Taxis, Simon de Pury, Aby Rosen, Susan Sarandon, Domenico Dolce, Natalia Vodianova, and Angelica Huston among others. One of her important portrait commissions was by Barry Diller for his yacht's figurehead–a sculpture standing almost three meters in stainless steel of Diane von Furstenberg. The National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC acquired another portrait she painted of Diane von Furstenberg for their permanent collection. Most recently, she has been commissioned to sculpt 50 stars for the entrance wall of the new museum of the Statue of Liberty.
The self portraits of French-American artist Anh Duong are characterised by her piercing gaze. They contemplate the complex and intensely private relationship between the self and the contemporary world.
GALERIE GMURZYNSKA is an international art gallery with locations in Zurich, Zug and St. Moritz, Switzerland, that specialises in modern and contemporary art as well as Russian avant-garde.
The gallery was founded in 1965 in Cologne, Germany by Antonina Gmurzynska. From the beginning, the gallery was interested in organising exhibitions that had a documentary character both through the choice of themes and through its publications.
In 1996 Mathias Rastorfer became a partner of both extensions of the gallery, having been with it since 1991 when he left his position as Associate Director at Pace Gallery in New York. Under his influence and in addition to the gallery’s traditional repertoire, the work of contemporary artists such as Donald Judd, Louise Nevelson and Yves Klein amongst others, was incorporated. Ten years later the gallery opened its third branch in St. Moritz at Via Serlas, in 2003.
Forty years after its establishment, Krystyna Gmurzynska and Mathias Rastorfer relocated the gallery from Cologne to its new flagship location in Zurich’s Paradeplatz in 2005. The building that currently houses the gallery dates back to 1857 and it is the same building in which the Dada movement was founded in 1917. The first exhibition in Zurich was a solo exhibition by Alexander Calder entitled, The Modernist, that was thoroughly endorsed by the Calder Foundation, which described it is as, 'rare to experience a presentation of this quality outside of a museum'. As with each exhibition at the gallery the show featured a fully illustrated catalogue with important essays.
Galerie Gmurzynska continues to present unique exhibitions that are both historically well researched and scientifically documented. It also continues to work with leading art historians as well as collaborating with museums on exhibitions and for the enlargement of their permanent collections. Additionally, it currently participates in several art fairs such as Art Basel Miami Beach, Art Basel Hong Kong, Frieze Masters in London, Salon in New York and Art Basel, Switzerland. In the past it has taken part in FIAC, Abu Dhabi and PAD New York.
