Press Release

This fall at Hauser & Wirth London, Cindy Sherman will debut photographic works from her new Fabric Matrons series that explores identity as a continual process of construction over a lifetime.

Shaped by a visual vocabulary of elaborately draped fabrics, the protagonists in Cindy Sherman’s images appear to dissolve into their surroundings, heightening the tension between concealment and display to examine how women negotiate visibility in different phases of life. Through these staged scenes, the artist foregrounds the performance—and perception—of both femininity and beauty, probing the societal expectations and enduring pressure to fashion and maintain a public image over time.

The works on view mark a sophisticated evolution in her engagement with fashion imagery, with many pieces incorporating fabrics and other elements drawn from Chanel’s extensive archives. Sherman’s dialogue with the fashion house dates back to her Ominous Landscapes series (2010 – 2012), in which her characters wore archival garments and accessories. The new series on view in London embraces an intensified sense of theatrical styling, drawing on the visual codes of editorial photography to disrupt the glamour of fashion with deliberate artifice and fabrication.

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About the Artist

Born in 1954 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, Cindy Sherman lives and works in New York NY. Her ground-breaking photographs have interrogated themes around representation and identity in contemporary media for over four decades. Coming to prominence in the late 1970s with the Pictures Generation group alongside artists such as Sherrie Levine, Richard Prince and Louise Lawler, Sherman studied art at Buffalo State College in 1972 where she turned her attention to photography. In 1977, shortly after moving to New York, Sherman began her critically acclaimed ‘Untitled Film Stills’. A suite of 69 black and white portraits, ‘Untitled Film Stills’ sees Sherman impersonate a myriad of stereotypical female characters and caricatures inspired by Hollywood pictures, film noir, and B movies. Using a range of costumes, props and backdrops to manipulate her own appearance and to create photographs resembling promotional film images, the series explores the tension between artifice and identity in consumer culture which has preoccupied the artist’s practice ever since.

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Also Exhibiting at Hauser & Wirth

About the Gallery

Hauser & Wirth was founded in 1992 in Zurich by Iwan Wirth, Manuela Wirth and Ursula Hauser, who were joined in 2000 by Partner and Vice President Marc Payot. A family business with a global outlook, Hauser & Wirth has expanded over the past 26 years to include outposts in Hong Kong, London, New York, Los Angeles, Somerset and Gstaad. The gallery represents over 70 artists and estates who have been instrumental in shaping its identity over the past quarter century, and who are the inspiration for Hauser & Wirth’s diverse range of activities that engage with art, education, conservation and sustainability.

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London 23 Savile Row
Hauser & Wirth
23 Savile Row, London, United Kingdom
+44 207 287 2300
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Opening hours
Tuesday – Saturday
10am – 6pm
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