Solo Exhibition Altman Siegel Gallery, San Francisco, U.S.A.
For Hershman Leeson, we wear masks in an attempt to articulate a multitude of identities. The artist’s consideration of masks in their relationship to personae permits her to examine the means through which identity, or the way one interfaces with the world, is an outcome of social production. She asks, why does one wear a mask? What forms do masks take? And, does one adopt different guises in order to stabilize their sense of self or to transform it? These concerns have been examined comprehensively throughout Hershman Leeson’s oeuvre. A revolutionary force in both Feminist and New Media art, the artist’s groundbreaking output has radically shaped artistic discourses around corporeal representation and its relationship to culture and technology. The artist utilizes non-traditional methods and media to consider how technological and sociopolitical upheaval informs our understanding of the individual.
For "About Face", Hershman Leeson takes the question of the self and all its vicissitudes over time as her starting point. Through a selection of career-spanning material, this exhibition presents examples of the ways Hershman Leeson, through re-presentation, reinvigorates modes of self-identification. Beginning with a selection of paintings and sculptural pieces from the 1960s and incorporating central bodies of work like the artist’s performance as the fictional Roberta Breitmore, the exhibition traces a genealogy to new work including "Botox Before/After", which explores the limitations of one’s ability to physically transform.
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